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There were about a dozen of us crammed into the kitchen, each holding the sinful mixture of caffeine and alcohol that comprises a Jagbomb. Somebody jumped the gun on trying to drink their shot and was immediately cautioned to stop. Geoff Pederson raised his voice and glass in unison.
“In this group we drink to one thing and one thing only.”
Those of us in the know nodded approvingly.
“Hot Tub Time Machine!”
***
The night before Grand Prix Minneapolis I laid the Naya Pod deck I had been working on in front of me. The deck was strong, but awkward. I had lost games for my lack of ability to reach four mana and from drawing too many of my 30-odd mana sources. I really wanted another two-drop but the format was a bit shy on creatures that my deck wanted. I wondered how embarrassing it would be to play two copies of Porcelain Legionnaire.
My train of thought was derailed when I realized that I had no way of getting to Minneapolis in the morning. I knew a fair number of people that were going but I lived on the opposite side of the cities of all of them.
I posted my dilemma on Facebook, hoping that somebody could come to my rescue. 10 p.m. the night before was a bit late to be working out travel arrangements, but my friends came through for me. I was contacted by Dana Kinsella and Jared Brown both offering to go well out of their way to pick me up.
The next morning Jared was at my place bright and early and we were on our way. He wasn’t even playing in the event.
***
After struggling to find lands on a heartbreaking mulligan to five, my round seven opponent extended his hand and signed the match slip. With three losses he was now out of contention for day two.
“Well, I guess it’s time to head back to Fargo.”
I hate playing on the bubble. Even when you win you are the bearer of someone else’s bad news.
“Sorry about that man. It’s never fun when you don’t even get to play. How many people do you have in your car?”
“It’s just me.”
“Oh. Well, hey, have a safe trip home.”
“Thanks. It was nice to meet you.”
“It was nice to meet you as well.”
***
“You’re not playing?”
“I don’t really want to.”
“You know this is the Legacy GP, right? You came all the way out here to not play in it?”
“I like Indianapolis.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Uhhh, drink? I just want to have a good vacation and hang out with you guys.”
You get to cast Brainstorm. BRAINSTORM!
It was vexing to me how somebody could pass on playing a Grand Prix when it was right there. A Legacy Grand Prix at that. The purest, most beautiful way to play Magic.
Of course, my perspective was a bit different than his. I was unemployed and needed to place well to make traveling for Magic viable. He was traveling to take a step back from the pressures of the real world.
I spent the majority of the event playing on the bubble and barely managed a top 64 finish. I made some plays that I was proud of but also had to deal with a lot of tilt to get there. I mean, I lost to Mono-Red, for Heaven’s sake.
He spent his weekend relaxing and enjoying life.
My trip was on the whole enjoyable, but his trip was wholly enjoyable.
I wasn’t about to stop playing tournaments, but his A Plan made for a marvelous B Plan.
The next weekend he again declined to play the GP in Nashville. I scrubbed out very quickly and soon after got busy enjoying the scenery. I lost every match I played without once being impressed by my opponents.
Even still, I wasn’t even remotely upset with this outcome. I was just thankful to have friends on the ready for adventure.
***
My opponent played his sixth mana source and slammed an Inferno Titan. The big red man left my board position in an embarrassing state.
The Zealous Conscripts in my hand taunted me. Threatening his Titan wouldn’t be terribly relevant with my opponent still on 20 life.
“It’s not the kill you Titan, but still pretty good.”
“I don’t know. I feel pretty dead.”
I was fortunate enough to peel an Oblivion Ring off the top, but I still had to find a way to start getting damage in. I passed the turn after RFG-ing his Titan and my opponent laid down a second.
“Sooooo dead.”
***
“That sucks man. He just Terminused you like three times.”
“The BS miracle deck is, by definition, BS.”
“Still sucks though.”
It’s true that it feels bad to lose to variance - more so a deck dedicated to rolling dice - but losing games of Magic was hardly anything new to me.
“Sometimes you run bad. There’s not much more to say.”
***
It was the final round of Pro Tour Nagoya. The winner of my match would certainly money and possibly top 50. At the time, this meant qualification for the next Pro Tour. The loser would finish outside of the money.
I was comfortably sitting at 20 life with a two-turn clock set up against a Mono-Red deck. The only relevant play my opponent had made up to this point was an early Shrine of Burning Rage.
I was right in believing that one of the players would be dead in two turns, but I had incorrectly assessed which it would be.
My opponent untapped and pointed a Red Sun's Zenith for six at my dome. He passed and I spent my turn attacking him down to five. On his final turn he aimed two Galvanic Blast and a Volt Charge at me. Suddenly his Shrine was lethal and, wouldn't you know, he had the eighth land.
Two games later and I was being murdered by a Kuldotha Phoenix wielding two Swords.
After the match I sat at the table for a good five minutes, alone with my thoughts in a room full of people. I had just spent hundreds of dollars that I didn’t have to spare traveling to Asia and I was going to return home empty handed.
My self-pity party ended abruptly when I took a second to think about where I was. It was easy to sit there and brood, but I was at the tail end of the most anticipated vacation of my life. To allow myself to continue to tilt would be an egregious disservice to myself.
Later Forrest Ryan, Kyle Stoll, Matthias Hunt, I and a cheap bottle of sake went out for a much-needed night on the town. We had a spectacular time.
It would have been easy for me to project my negative experience onto them, but what would be the point?
Expressing regret and disappointment are fantastic ways to waste your life.
***
“So where are you from?”
“I live in the area. You?”
“New York.”
“I imagine you came out here for more than just the GP.”
“No, I just graduated so I came out here for this.”
“Huh. Well, good luck to you then.”
Here was a man that had traveled half-way across the country just to play in a Standard GP. I could hardly be upset when he beat me, even if I hated his deck.
“Playing this deck I’ll need it. It’s kind of goofy, but this is the most fun I’ve had playing Magic in a long time.”
“That’s really the most important thing.”
I felt a little cheated to get miracled as much as I did, but if you can’t handle the swings, you shouldn’t be playing Magic. You certainly shouldn’t be playing Standard.
***
Nine rounds of Magic can leave a person pretty exhausted. With a 6-3 record I didn’t make the cut for day two. I went to find my friends to tell them the bad news. This wasn’t too difficult considering that we were all wearing our extremely vibrant pink polos and could easily see one another from any point in the event hall.
I approached the group and gave them a big thumbs down. This was met with applause by them.
“Alright! Overturf’s partying with us!”
I held back a smile and let out a sigh.
“You guys are the worst.”
Some people would be upset about not making day two. More people would be insulted that their friends applauded their failure. I'm not one to get worked up about these things. Odds are I would’ve quit Magic by now if it wasn’t for them.
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I went to my first PTQ of the season this past weekend, and while I didn’t have the results I was looking for (3-0, followed by 0-2) I scoured buylists at the dealers to start prepping for the remainder of the season. What I found was a slight shift of what I’m used to from years past. As a result, I’m adjusting my plan for this PTQ season ever-so-slightly.
PTQ’s Are now run by Local Gaming Stores (LGSs)
Why does this matter? It actually has a huge impact on my typical exit strategy pre-rotation. Normally, I’m stocking up on quality uncommons to dump before they rotate, and this year is no different. However, since LGSs are now controlling PTQ’s, many events don’t have any dealers separate from the TO, and the ones that do have considerably fewer than what I’m used to. This means dealers aren’t forced to compete with their buylist pricing, and you don’t see the inflation that we normally do for “last minute needs” like Dismember or Inquisition of Kozilek of years past.
Looking over the buy lists, we see that the vendors have seriously devalued their rotating cards, likely because they’ve experienced this trend in the past. They did, however, have extremely high buy prices on many Innistrad Block cards. Some of this may have been tied to an up coming Block Constructed GP in my area, so I’d be curious if others have seen this in their stores.
I ended up dumping over $100 in rares that I would typically consider to be bulk, or very close to it, at anywhere between $0.25 and $1 a piece. Some included unusual cards, like Grimore of the Dead, at $1, and Ghoultree at $0.50. If you plan on visiting local PTQ’s see if the TO will give you contact information for any on-site vendors, and you may be able to scour their buylist in advance.
What to do with rotating cards then?
I plan on bringing my stash with me to the Grand Prix next weekend, and doing some serious buylist grinding, but that’s not always an option. The other outlets include the obvious: EBay, MOTL and local dealers. Typically, we see the peak of price points early in June, so I’m going through my speculation stashes, and preparing for the cash-out. I spoke to former QS contributor Stu Somers, and he’s already moved his things out, fearing announcements of M2013 being detrimental.
In my opinion, it’s best to wait another week or two. If you have some particular cards that have especially spiked, then sure it’s time to get out, but if not, you do stand to lose some value by not waiting a week or two. We still have a Standard format that is adapting to Avacyn Restored and the PTQ season is just starting to get rolling. There are still openings for Scars Block cards to shoot up, and I don’t want to dump my stuff in front of that. If the GP doesn’t bring good options this coming weekend, I’ll be shooting for the second weekend in June.
I have a local dealer here, who I know would easily take everything I needed to dump, but I may give the EBay route a go myself this year, to try and maximize value out of my pieces. If you choose to go this route, I would start early and get a good template for your postings ready to go. The tough part is deciding if there will be cards that you need for PTQ season before the purge, so do your best not to lose value by dumping cards you may need later. Key cards on the chopping block for me are Scars Duals, Titans, M12 Duals and also rotating Planeswalkers.
Scars Duals will continue to be extremely relevant throughout the Summer, so those could be held for a bit longer if needed, but upon rotation they're going to fall dramatically. Being poor options for formats like Commander and Legacy, only fringe play in Modern will keep these around $2 max.
The Titans are a big one. They see minimal to non-existant play in older formats, and yet they dominate the current Standard. They'll maintain their higher prices as G/R Ramp is all over the place. As soon as the season ends these will plummet, so don't miss out on the opportunity to get out now. While [card=Primeval Titan]Prime-Time[/card] is a Commander Staple, the others will likely fade to bulk Mythic status fairly quickly. In this category I also want to include cards like Elesh Norn, Wurmcoil Engine and Massacre Wurm. These should maintain some amount of value, mostly for Commander, but also for Modern and Legacy. I think you'll have a chance to pick them up cheaper if they turn out to be relevant in the future.
Most of the rotating Planeswalkers are not very exciting at the moment anyway, but I'm looking to dump all of them. Based on a spoiling of a Chandra themed card for M13, we can assume Chandra will come back and fall even farther down the price line, while the remaining Planeswalkers are going to decline whether they are reprinted or not, as none of them see play in older formats. The two exceptions are Tezzeret and Gideon. Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas is essentially only played in older formats, so I don't expect it to shift in price much. While Gideon, if not reprinted, will make occasional appearances in Modern and Legacy so should end up around $5, at which point, I might like to stash some. If it is reprinted, it may see a slight drop, but likely will stay in the $6-10 range.
The Core Set Duals are either going to see their fourth printing, or they will rotate. In either case, they certainly aren't going up. Any that are currently holding any value should be sold, any that sit at low prices can be held for a brief spike if they appear in a Standard deck this summer.
Should any of the above see reprint, you can likely get back in after PTQ season at the same price you got out. Next week I’ll give my report from the dealer scene at GP Anaheim, and give an update on what price points I’m looking to hit with the cards I’m dumping. I’ve also heard of people dumping their Innistrad duals due to fears of Shockland reprints, or other out-classing lands coming in the Magic 2013.
This doesn't mean you give up on all of your speculation for Standard. You still want to keep the diverse collection of a handful of cards discussed over the last couple weeks, so as trends change throughout the season you still have the opportunity to capitalize. Having a few positions that will benefit from various types of changes almost guarantees that when the format next shifts you'll have some sizable winners. We want to dump the stuff that is certain to face huge losses, but still leave ourselves in a position to gain when the next deck appears.
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A couple weeks ago, the iconic painting “The Scream” by Edvard Munch sold at auction for a whopping $119,922,500. This placed Munch over Picasso in history as the artist with the most expensive piece of artwork ever sold. My reaction can best be encompassed by the central figure in the painting itself:
That is an incredibly large sum of money for a piece of artwork. No matter how much of a classic this painting is, it’s highly unlikely Munch could have ever imagined his work would fetch such a large sum a hundred years later.
What’s This Got To Do With Magic?
The iconic Alpha Black Lotus has appreciated significantly since its initial printing (albeit not to $119 Million). When I first began playing Magic, this card fetched around $300. As a newcomer to the game with no income on days other than my birthday and Christmas, this price seemed way too steep for a piece of cardboard.
Now, nearly twenty years later, circulated copies of this iconic Magic: the Gathering card have sold at auction for amounts in excess of $3,000 – an increase of 1,000%!
But these versions are circulated – they have seen play and they likely continue to see play in Vintage decks. There are far rarer versions of the Alpha Black Lotus – ones which are virtually unplayed in condition.
In fact the PSA-10 Mint Alpha Black Lotus has sold for upwards of $20,000 in previous sales. The [supposed] only one in existence is now for sale on eBay with an asking price of $100,000. Crazy? Yes! Crazier than paying $119 Million for a painting? Perhaps not.
NM Alpha vs. SP Alpha
Based on the most widely accepted numbers, each Alpha rare was printed about 1100 times by Wizards of the Coast. This count places any rare from Alpha high up on the list of rarest Magic: the Gathering cards.
But given these cards are nearly twenty years old, and most were played to oblivion, the subset of NM rare Alpha cards is even more elite. While it is impossible to garner exact numbers, even a generous fraction such as 10% NM would imply there are only about 100 copies of any NM Alpha rare card in existence.
Retailers have caught on to this fact – back in April, Star City Games significantly increased their buy and sell prices on NM Alpha/Beta cards only. They purposefully emphasize in their buy list that one should inquire about buy list prices for SP and MP copies. When we observe SCG is selling NM versions of Alpha rares at 2x the price of SP versions, we can certainly see why they’ve created this discrepancy.
But we don’t even have to lay out $20,000 to own a unique piece. Many NM Alpha rares are relatively much more affordable, yet they are still very rare and demand a healthy premium. NM copies of the five laces from Alpha, for example, sell for $100 on Star City Games and they are even sold out of some! Consider Lifelace, which is about as playable as Song of Blood, yet far rarer and more expensive.
Even though the card is not useful in tournament or casual settings, the simple rarity of the NM Alpha Lifelace has driven this card’s price up to surprising proportions. The card sells at 200x its 4th Edition price, and it even far out shadows the Beta version, which sells for only about one eighth the Alpha price.
An even more bizarre example lies in that pesky creature Fungusaur. That’s right, I said Fungusaur. Check out Star City Games’ sell price on that unplayable Alpha rare in NM form:
Anyone who has been playing this game long enough has opened one of these rares, and I’d even go out on a limb to say that virtually none of us were ecstatic to open this “crap rare”. Yet grab a NM Alpha copy of this beloved Fungus Lizard and you’ve got yourself a card that retails for $200! I’d wager a graded version with PSA score 8 or above may be even more expensive!
How could the Alpha version of this card be so expensive when it is so unplayable? My theory may surprise you…
Cornering the Market
Apparently there is a collector out there who owns at least 85 copies of Alpha Fungusaur. This picture is worth 1,000 words and well over $1,000:
Owning 85 copies of almost any card in the game of Magic – even something like foil Jace, the Mind Sculptor – and you still haven’t even scratched the surface of the total quantity in circulation. Own 85 copies of any Alpha rare, however, and you can officially manipulate the market.
These 85 Alpha Fungusaurs represent nearly 10% of the total quantity ever printed. This single collector likely owns more Alpha copies than the largest 10 MTG retailers combined. The largest retailer in the world, Star City Games, boasts 14 copies for sale at the moment – about one sixth of what is pictured above.
When print runs are so few, price manipulation is a possibility. One could even “corner the market” in a particular Alpha rare. In other words, acquiring only 85 copies of an Alpha rare, no matter the card, is sufficient to manipulate the card’s price. As a result, a major retailer like Star City Games sells this unplayable card at twice the price as its unplayable counterparts in Alpha. And again, NM copies take the cake selling at $50 higher than SP versions.
What Should We Do With This Information?
I strongly discourage you from attempting to corner the market in any of these rare cards. To do so is very risky and profiting from the endeavor is not easy. Attempt to sell a significant quantity of stock and you’ll likely kill the price rendering the remainder of your collection worth far less.
Still, there is something to be learned here. NM Alpha rares are incredibly difficult to acquire. Some retailers, like ABU Games, have known this for a while now. Others, like Star City Games, are finally catching on and altering their prices to reflect this. Still other retailers such as Troll and Toad, as well as smaller eBay sellers, have not fully embraced this information.
As a result I've managed to snag not one, but two NM Alpha Two-Headed Giant of Foriys from a well-known retailer at the reasonable price of $55.99. This seems like a steep price to pay for another unplayable card, but a quick visit to Star City Games’ buy list and you’ll see that they are buying NM copies of this oldie for $60. Hence, I made an immediate $8 profit between the two copies I purchased.
These opportunities are out there. One other recent acquisition I made was a sweet PSA-8 graded Alpha Earthquake for $59.00. Although not pristine enough to command a major premium, Star City Games will still buy the card at $60 and sell at $100.
But the overall goal isn’t to make $1 here and there selling cards to retailers’ buy lists. Instead, I want you to consider the long haul. An unplayable NM Alpha rare may never reach the same prices as a Black Lotus, but collectors looking to complete their sets will need one Fungusaur for every Black Lotus. With Magic growing in popularity, combined with the fact that Alpha cards are perpetually aging, we have a recipe for significant gains.
Cards that once fetched pennies are now selling for $100. Could the growth rate continue? Will there be a point in time when NM Alpha Fungusaurs are so difficult to find that they will break four digit prices? Graded ones may…
These rarities don’t follow the normal ebb and flow of pricing like normal Magic Cards do. Instead of moving trajectories comparable to the stock market, they instead follow paths resembled by classic artwork. Incredibly sparse, NM Alpha rares (especially graded highly) can grow in price at astronomical rates as long as there is a market for them.
Perhaps five years down the line I will have my NM Alpha Two-Headed Giants graded in hopes of a boost in value. They may never be worth as much as a NM Black Lotus, but one thing is for certain – if Star City Games feels they are worth acquiring at $60 each, I am certainly going to acquire them below that price any chance I can get.
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As promised last week, this week's article will deviate a little bit from the usual format. Try and keep up because I have a lot to cover!
Last Monday I piled into a Jeep with Quiet Speculation's former feature writer and friend of the site Ryan Bushard, and our mutual friend Aaron Sulla, and set out to see if we could increase the success Ryan had on his last shop crawl if we had more initial investment capital.
Some of you may be wondering about what a shop crawl is, how you go about deciding if it is for you, how to get started, etc.. Ryan wrote an excellent article series on Gatheringmagic.com here first, then here, so there is little point in my rehashing his articles.
We followed his same method for preparing for this trip. The phone calls ahead were key and made for smooth sailing later on in the trip.
A collection of my tweets about the trip can be found at this hashtag.
The Crawl
An important part of this process was planning ahead.
In this case, it meant deciding whether or not to buy bulk. There is a risk associated with buying bulk sight unseen, namely that it's HEAVY. Douglas Linn wrote an article on the topic here: Dream Cache – How Much Do Magic Cards Weigh?
Pure bulk Magic cards are worth roughly $4-$5 per thousand, which is not a great profit margin, especially when you calculate how much the extra bulk will be a drag on your gas mileage. It may be a net loss if you pick up pure bulk, so if you think the cards are picked through or you can't get them for about $1 per thousand, it's rarely worth it.
The only exception is unpicked "bulk" which may yield treasure. Nothing beats paying $20 on 10,000 cards only to discover that there are Imperious Perfects, Strip Mines, Squirrel Nests or any of the myriad other gems that weren't printed at rare but are worth much more than half a cent per card. Picking gems out of a dirt-cheap collection is extremely time-consuming but can pay huge dividends.
How do you know if the cards are pure bulk? Usually this can be accomplished by scoping out the type of store you're dealing with ahead of time. This is where the phone call ahead comes in.
On this trip we decided not to buy much Magic bulk. None of the stores we called seemed like the type of places to be either
Desperate to get rid of their stock, or,
Clueless enough to have unpicked boxes they were willing to move as bulk.
That being the case, we decided to shift gears and go after singles we thought were underpriced at the shops we visited and also pick up some sealed product. Russian AVR packs at English retail and Shards block foil packs at $6 each seemed like prudent investments. We bought every pack we could find.
We won the pack lottery, netting a foil Elspeth, some other nice foils, and nearly every card we had wished to open. I wouldn't rely on sealed product to make your trip be profitable, but if the price is right, a few good opens can make for some nice gravy.
So if we didn't buy Magic bulk, and we didn't make our money in packs, how did we make any money at all? The answer to that lies in your end goal for the trip. Are you looking to end up back home with card stock? Will you end up outing at a retail location like Troll and Toad in Kentucky? Or, like us, is the rainbow at the end of your shop crawl a Grand Prix?
In our case, the end goal was GP Minneapolis and we rolled up with a Jeep that was totally stuffed.
With Pokemon.
That's right- the best buy on the Magic shop crawl didn't turn out to be Magic cards at all.
At a GP or event where a dealer like Troll and Toad is present, bulk Pokemon is worth 10 times as much as Magic bulk.
You can make as much as $45-$50 per thousand, making it well worth picking it up and hauling it. We managed to sell the Pokemon bulk we had accumulated in our shopcrawl for over a thousand dollars. Not bad for some cards we couldn't pick if our lives depended on it.
I'm sure we left hundreds in $1-$5 uncommons, but the amount of profit we made made this a moot point. I'm sure the dealer was happy to get extra value and we were happy to have an easy out. A win-win like this can help establish a future relationship with a dealer and ensure you always have an out for bulk. Just make sure the dealer knows you're coming with a ton of Pokechaff or you may end up stuck with it because they couldn't take it.
Some dealers are flying home and don't want to pay hundreds in weight overage fees and may pass on the whole collection as a result. An alternative is visiting the dealer's retail location. They generally pay better rates if you mail it in (expensive!) or drop it off in person, which isn't all that expensive if you make plans to end the trip there.
So is that all? Buy some cheap packs, try to scan cases for bargains (even dealers who use a website for prices won't know what to do with weird stuff like foreign foils) and maybe pocket some monsters? Sure, that's part of it, but I have a little more wisdom to impart.
I think we'll leave it here for now and I will fill in some of the gaps next week. You won't want to miss part 2 of this recap!
The end of the road was the beginning of the story
Once our road trip was over with our arrival in Minneapolis, the real work began. Aaron signed up for the Grand Prix main event and Ryan and I still had to turn our cardboard money into paper money. Walking around and talking to the dealers gave us two very important pieces of info.
The Wolfir Silverheart bubble is bursting
The weekend price for Bonfire of the Damned could approach $40
This information isn't always useful if you're not at the GP or after it's over, but Quiet Speculation Insiders frequently receive advance info like this when it's far reaching. It's nice to get the word before Monday rolls around, the buy-ship's sailed and it's too late to move anything because everyone knows the results.
As it was, Ryan and I had been picking up Wolfirs since the Insider email blast calling them at $1.50 and dumped them immediately on our first few trade partners who were hoping to get a premium from people who came with unbuilt decks. Paying $20 cash on Bonfire actually wasn't unreasonable, as $30 to $40 in trade was easily attainable and cashing out could leave you with that $20 back in your pocket and a few choice pieces of trade bait in the binder.
The GP was modestly-attended with just over 1060 players in the main event. The top 8 on day 2 was stacked with a lot of decks that I'm sure won't surprise many people. Except, that is, with one possible exception.
With a mere 3 copies of Sulfur Falls in the maindeck and a sideboard that looks more like a binder page than a board (14 unique cards!?), a casual observer might think event winner Christian Calcano showed up without a complete deck and threw together enough borrowed cards in his colors to make a legal 75 and hoped for the best.
To watch him play, however, told a different story.
His friends all told him he was nuts for running this build (one of them told me, before the even even started, that his friend was "trolling" by playing UR Delver), but he managed to silence all of the doubters and go 11-0 in Swiss.
QS Insiders will recognize one of these cards from the e-mail blast from Barcelona -Desolate Lighthouse, a card not on a lot of radars that saw heavy play as a miracle enabler in Block. After watching Calcano windmill a Bonfire of the Damned to kill his opponent (when he was dead on board, mind you) from the Lighthouse's loot, I know it has huge potential.
If you want to draw on their turn, looting is a fine mechanic I hear.
Brad Nelson must have heard that as well. Nelson's innovative Grand Architect build used a few Merfolk Looters to great effect.
Could we see a price spike on Architect? As an early adopter of Architect and someone sitting on hundreds of copies, I can't say I'd be sad to see it go up. This deck is all in on clones and Wurmcoil Engines. Did Brad blow out more than one person when they swung their 6/6 titan at his 6/6 Engine by calmly baptizing the Engine as a member blue tribe, allowing it to survive the encounter? That's speculation on my part, but that last ability on Architect is forgotten almost as often as Loxodon Hierarch's sac ability.
If this deck sees some play before rotation, don't make the same mistake. That trick gets even better after the Wurmcoil Engine dies and thrinaxes into 2 tokens, netting you 8 power in attackers for UU. Sick value.
A better road trip destination
Sunny Orlando was the site of the Star City Open this same weekend. There wasn't quite the same level of innovation that we saw at the GP, but there were a few surprises all the same.
UB Infect in the top 32! Amazing! I wish I could high five Trek Barnes for having a cool name AND a cool deck.
Infect was on everyone's minds that weekend, as event winner John Cuvelier included a maindeck Viridian Corrupter. Astute observers among you will be quick to point out that this inclusion was to destroy pesky Swords and Pikes. Poppycock! No one expects the Corrupter alpha strike aided by a quick Wolf Run pump. Gain all the life you want, chump!
Dredge is a fine, fine choice right now. If it weren't, I could get more than 50 cents from a dealer for Graffdigger's Cage. Event winner Mark Eilers ran a relatively stock list (Lion's Eye Diamond is back as the preferred dump method thanks to the printing of Faithless Looting) and played very tight to take home first prize.
However, the 4th place deck blew me away: U/W Miracle!
With so many players trying to break personal tutor and other short-sighted methods of trying to use Temporal Mastery to take an extra turn, Shawn French, my new hero, quietly brewed up a list that uses the first card that came to my mind when the miracle mechanic was spoiled: Sensei's Divining Top!
In a list that runs a grand total of zero over-hyped Temporal Mastery, Shawn smashed faces with value-costed angels and ruined lives with 1 mana Wraths all day and put no more work into setting it up than the same Brainstorm/Jace/Top Shenanigans any control player worth their salt was doing already. Instead of Time Walking himself to set up Mastery, this list adds the explosive power of two new miracle cards that may be here to stay in Legacy.
Great innovation, Shawn!
Worth noting, 42nd place was snagged by a deck I said wasn't a deck - Food Chain Griffin! Packed with a ton of great creatures with useful ETB abilities and finishers in the form of Eldrazi, this deck uses the ramping power of Food Chain with Misthollow Griffin to gain infinite mana used to play creature spells. Quiet Speculation's own Tyler Tyssedal has been playing around with a Food Chain list, claiming it to be more fun than competitive, although it can consistently land T3 Eldrazi through either Food Chain or Show and Tell.
It looks fun to play and can apparently gets results. Nice job, Christopher Piedra!
How I accidentally legitimacy
If a popular Magic podcast had to put a guest host in the clutch spot between John Medina one week and Conley Woods (hopefully) 2 weeks later, that person would have to be the best of the best, the cream of the crop, someone very special.
At least that's what I am hoping people will assume about me. By sheer luck (and by knowing Ryan Bushard and writing for the same site [this one] as Corbin Hosler), I managed to lucksack myself into a guest host spot on the Brainstorm Brewery podcast that went up this week. Hey, if I weren't totally awesome and/or not a donkey, could I possibly follow up their best episode to date, their episode featuring John "John Freakin' Medina" Freakin' Medina himself? Of course not, don't be silly.
Joking aside, I totally lucksacked into the invite to do this podcast as it's one of the top 3 Magic podcasts on mtgcast.com and the only credible one about financial info. If you haven't been listening, I'd highly recommend it. It's both entertaining and educational and it was a blast and a genuine honor for me to get the invite.
I make a total donkey out of myself. I'm sure you'll get a kick out of it.
I'm gonna make like a tree and get out of here
That does it for us this week, ladies and germ tokens. Catch me here next week where I'll talk more about the shopcrawl and give you more life-saving info.
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Even if you've been playing Commander for a short time, you probably have a favorite deck. Maybe you love the Commander itself or the deck's general strategy. Maybe it has your favorite cards or some wacky interaction between an unlikely combination of cards. It doesn't matter-- for whatever reason, this is the stack of cards you're most familiar and comfortable with.
I'm best known for my Child of Alara deck, which I do enjoy because of how complex and cerebral the games can get, but it's definitely not my favorite.
The one deck I have never taken apart and always keep up to date is Kemba, Kha Regent. It is a grindy mono-white control deck that aims to attrition people out with value equipment, creature tokens and recursion.
There are also a few miniature combos that further the main game plan of building incremental advantages.
Here's where the list is right now:
Untitled Deck
Creatures
Instants
Sorceries
Artifacts
Enchantments
Lands
17 Snow-Covered Plains
This deck is based on interactions between all kinds of equipment and the free creatures you generate from Kemba.
What you want to do is assemble a value engine, for example Mortarpod plus Basilisk Collar or Nim Deathmantle, and use that to generate as much board presence and card advantage as possible. When someone eventually destroys one of your artifacts, you either replace it with a redundant combo piece or buy it back with an effect like Treasure Hunter.
Let's take a look at how the deck is built to execute this plan. We'll start from the ground up with the mana base.
The Mana Base
This is actually a critical part of the deck. I see it as the linchpin that enables the deck to function as well as it does. Your engines are mana-intensive so you must be capable of producing large quantities of colorless mana.
Lands
High Market
Mishra's Factory
Mutavault
Windbrisk Heights
Emeria, the Sky Ruin
Temple of the False God
Inkmoth Nexus
Scrying Sheets
Ancient Tomb
Blinkmoth Nexus
Kjeldoran Outpost
Buried Ruin
Urza's Tower
Urza's Mine
Urza's Power Plant
Glimmerpost
Cloudpost
Vesuva
17 Snow-Covered Plains
There are essentially four kinds of lands here. The first are basics, because we have to produce colored mana at some point.
Next we have lands with the potential to produce large quantities of colorless mana. The upside of these is absolutely huge in a deck that's as mana hungry as this one; the downside is that sometimes you can't cast your double-white spells until turn four or five.
Third, we have manlands to suit up with equipment. Your swords rely on hitting players, so it's important to make sure you have a board presence even after a sweeper.
Last, there are value lands that generate card advantage in some way, like Windbrisk Heights and Emeria, the Sky Ruin.
Thirty-five lands may seem low for a deck this mana-hungry, and indeed for any of my decks. The short story is that I haven't had any trouble with this number, and have actually flooded more often than not. Many of your lands produce more than one mana, so it's not a huge deal if you stumble a little.
Once you hit eight mana, you can start doing several things each turn. Usually the deck reaches this point by turn six or seven.
Sometimes you can get there much faster with artifact acceleration and other cards that help you hit your land drops:
Acceleration and Tutors
Ashnod's Altar
Sol Ring
Mana Crypt
Mind Stone
Mox Opal
Everflowing Chalice
Caged Sun
Expedition Map
Land Tax
Explorer's Scope
Weathered Wayfarer
Now, I'm usually not a fan of artifact mana because I think it does degenerate things to the game. However, this deck uses a ton of equipment which are huge tempo sinks. Unless you can get that tempo back somehow, you're going to be far behind for a huge portion of the game. That's why I think mana rocks are pretty reasonable in this deck.
The second section of cards guarantees that you can continue to make land drops in the mid- and late-game. Especially important are the tutors that find Glimmerpost, Vesuva or a missing Urzatron piece.
This deck can do a lot of work with a relatively small amount of mana, so it's not the end of the world if you get stuck on lands early. However, as you approach the end of the game, you do need to produce larger and larger quantities of colorless mana in order to equip and reequip multiple times per turn.
The most interesting card here is Ashnod's Altar, which turns cats into mana. For the longest time I didn't want to run it because it gives you the ability to combo off. That said, this deck can't go infinite in the way other decks can. You can generate infinite mana, tutor up all your equipment and equip them as many times as you want. But any way of killing outside of combat will require five or more cards, which I am okay with.
Guys with Swords
The creatures contribute a lot to this deck's game plan. As I said before, you want to assemble engines that generate free cards and develop a robust board presence that's hard to disrupt. In order to do that, we have three kinds of creatures:
Sanctum Gargoyle
Treasure Hunter
Razor Hippogriff
Sun Titan
Karmic Guide
Stoneforge Mystic
Stonehewer Giant
Taj-Nar Swordsmith
Sunblast Angel
Solemn Simulacrum
Leonin Shikari
Indomitable Archangel
Requiem Angel
Fiend Hunter
Puresteel Paladin
Mentor of the Meek
The first set of guys rebuys artifacts and other permanents. These pair especially well with artifacts and lands that rebuy creatures, assembling a board presence that's difficult to break apart. Next, you have creatures that tutor up equipment and find the engine piece you're missing (usually Mortarpod). Last, you have generic value creatures that either interact well with the deck or generate card advantage.
The creatures with "Enters the Battlefield" abilities are critical, because you pull ahead in the mid- and late-game by casting those guys over and over again to find or recur the pieces you need. You're mostly looking for the effects that these guys provide, but being a creature is very relevant for things like Nim Deathmantle and Sword of Light and Shadow.
Speaking of Nim Deathmantle, let's talk about comboing off with Ashnod's Altar and the Recurring Nightmare impersonator. There are two infinite combos.
Karmic Guide plus these two cards lets you trigger any EtB creature's ability infinite times. You sacrifice the guy for two mana, sacrifice Karmic Guide for two mana, then return Karmic Guide with Deathmantle and repeat.
Alternately, you can generate infinite mana with Sun Titan or Karmic Guide and Fiend Hunter. Just Fiend Hunter your Sun Titan, sacrifice the hunter for mana, return it to play with Sun Titan and repeat. Add Mentor of the Meek to draw your deck or Nim Deathmantle to regrow your entire graveyard.
The interactions between these cards aren't always apparent. You can definitely surprise people who aren't expecting shenanigans like this from a white deck.
Choose Your Weapon
We've already talked about some of the degenerate things that Nim Deathmantle is capable of. The other equipment are just as capable of crazy interactions. Most of the equipment was chosen because they generate value as opposed to just making guys gigantic. That isn't to say you don't need to make guys huge sometimes, but that's usually secondary to generating cards and controlling the board.
Nim Deathmantle
Sword of Light and Shadow
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of War and Peace
Umezawa's Jitte
Diviner's Wand
Skullclamp
Lightning Greaves
Swiftfoot Boots
Darksteel Plate
Champion's Helm
Batterskull
Moonsilver Spear
Sword of Body and Mind
Basilisk Collar
Gorgon Flail
Mortarpod
Thornbite Staff
Leonin Bola
Bonehoard
Sigil of Distinction
Konda's Banner
Strata Scythe
I've split these into different categories based on the role they play. The first category generates cards in some way. Whether you're actually drawing cards off of Sword of Fire and Ice or Skullclamp, or just rebuying guys with Sword of Light and Shadow and Nim Deathmantle, their purpose is to generate tangible resources for you to put towards developing the board.
The second set of cards protect Kemba from removal. Swords certainly help with that as well, but these are the ones that most efficiently and single-mindedly ensure Kemba survives long enough to generate cats. It's important to note that many games come down to whether or not you can stick and protect Darksteel Plate. Because of that, you may consider including Shield of Kaldra, but I've done fine by being patient and not playing Plate into countermagic or Return to Dust.
The next set of equipment provide bodies to throw equipment on. A huge problem I experienced in the early development of this deck was running out of guys. At that point I had a lifegain subtheme with Soul Warden effects and Martyr of Sands. While you could give those guys equipment, they were fragile and died often. This section ensures you have an excess of creatures.
The fourth set of cards leverages cat tokens to control the board. Deathtouch equipment combined with Mortarpod gives you unconditional removal for two mana and a sacrificed token. Thornbite Staff costs more up front but gives you the same effect without requiring a sacrifice. Leonin Bola is a recent upgrade to Diversionary Tactics, a card that doesn't get nearly enough love in its own right.
The last set of equipment pump Kemba or Inkmoth Nexus into one-shot range. Sigil of Distinction and Bonehoard are the best of these by far. Bonehoard gives you the largest effect for a small investment, whereas Sigil is incredibly flexible. You can cast it early for one or two just for something to equip or save it for a Fireball later on. That said, I'm looking to cut most of these equipment for more versatile effects.
Two cards I would like to try are the combo of Runed Stalactite and Oathkeeper, Takeno's Daisho. This may be a little too cute though, even if the deck could use more recursion.
And Everything Else
Finally we have utility spells to deal with miscellaneous problematic permanents.
To be honest I am not happy with this part of the deck. I've had a ton of trouble dealing with artifacts and enchantments, which shouldn't be the case for white. Unfortunately I'm not sure which cards I can add to improve on those that already made the cut. I may start by trying Saltblast, Seal of Cleansing and Wispmare (yes, really).
Steelshaper's Gift
Enlightened Tutor
Swords to Plowshares
Dispatch
Path to Exile
Mass Calcify
Austere Command
Return to Dust
Aura of Silence
Sensei's Divining Top
Scroll Rack
Sculpting Steel
Slate of Ancestry
As you can see, this is a mish-mash of sweepers and spot removal that mostly ignore your opponents' enchantments and artifacts. The card selection package interacts with Land Tax, Explorer's Scope and Scrying Sheets to make sure you find a good mix of action and lands.
There's not a whole lot more to say about these cards. They do the work intended for them well.
Throw Enough Cats at a Problem...
And that's all there is to that! I'm incredibly happy with this deck; it does all the things that I love-- grinding out small advantages, recurring value creatures, breaking cards no one else seems to like (Mortarpod). I'd definitely recommend building something like this if you're interested in a midrange voltron deck rather than one that's all-in on beating down.
Next week, we'll take a look at a new legend from Avacyn Restored. I haven't decided which one yet, so if you have a preference let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
Carlos Gutierrez
cag5383@gmail.com cag5383 on Twitter
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There's the old adage that "a fool and his money are soon parted," but there's often a different factor at work with scammers preying on Magic players, and it's as old as the confidence game itself. Since so much money changes hands in Magic, the market attracts scammers, just like most other markets. The biggest arena that I see this in is in auction collections on eBay. I've been drawn in before, as have many other people, and this week, I'll share how you can both avoid scams and profitably look for collections on eBay.
The setup: how the scammer gets you snared.
Call it a hustle, a scam, a game or whatever - the setup is different but the objective is the same. There's this persistent notion that a con, short for "confidence game," involves tricking someone. Sure, the allure of a deal is big, but the best cons and the most frequent cons are ones that get the mark (you!) to feel like you are tricking the scammer! The con artist puts you in a position where you think you can take advantage of them. Of course, you're an amateur and they're a professional. The most savage cons and swindles involve this approach - they give some vulnerability away and say "exploit me!" In the meantime, they're making away with your loot.
With eBay auctions, the scam follows a pattern. Someone has a bunch of old cards and they don't know what they are. They post two pictures of boxes filled with cards and a list of Revised rares. Maybe they tucked a Bayou into that list. That gets bidders going nuts, wondering what else is in there. They want to exploit the vulnerability of this person who "just found these in my son's closet" and get boxes brimming with Black Lotuses. Instead, this is typically what they get:
$122 for fifty-five Jumps.
Drunk on the idea of finally getting one of those dream boxes filled with goodies, people put up massive amounts of money for unseen cards. The scammers depend on this. They fill those boxes with trashy commons. They fall back on "I had no idea what was in there anyway!" They play you because they get an eBay account with no Magic purchases in the feedback history. This can be one they created or just got from a friend - a friend who will take a few negative feedback ratings to make a couple hundred dollars in the exchange.
The old adage that "you cannot con an honest man" rings true. If you find yourself thinking "I am going to get such a deal on this!," remember that there are people who are very good at setting up a scene to make you feel that way. In the pic above, the person had split about 15,000 cards into 1,000-count lots. Most sold for $125-200. That's a $3,000 profit on a good day for a scam.
There are no "sure bets" in eBay collections any more.
You'll never see collections sell any more online where the price of the auction is less than the pictured, listed rares and other hot cards in the listing. This is because you and everyone else is tallying up the price of the cards that they know that they can get rid of and then they're determining how much risk they can bear on the "unseen" cards. I think eBay is still a great place to buy up collections, especially Standard-rich collections. It's a good way to get trade stock and the tools for good decks. Good collections that you see listed will have photos of everything and they will have lists of all the playable rares. These are the collections of people who are getting out of tournament play for whatever reason and they know that the cards are valuable. These are strong collections to bid on because you can pretty significantly price everything out. You don't take many risks.
I was on a foil kick awhile back and I saw an excellent collection of foils. It had a foil Tangle Wire and Thran Dynamo, which was about $45 combined at the time. There were other Urza- and Masques-era cards in the lot. Nothing spectacular, but not absolute trash, either. Unfortunately, the seller did not take photos of every page of foils and just listed highlights. This made sure that bidding went out of control, because other bidders were going nuts over what they could not see. The final bidder paid about $180 for what I put at about $75. They probably lost money.
People will "seed" auctions to look hotter.
I don't know if that foil auction was intentionally seeded or not; when someone won't show you the rest of what you're buying, you have to assume that they're only showing you expensive things for a reason. I could easily buy a foil Tangle Wire and a few other choice cards, then get some era-specific foils that were awful and mix them in. You can make obscene amounts of money for the effort doing this, because people still count on the hidden gems that they can't see.
A person I knew once sold off the remnants of his collection by holding back some good cards and seeding his pictures. He remembered the mentality of players around Revised, so he made sure to set that narrative in his auction. His "big money rares" picture showed three Shivan Dragons, a Vesuvan Doppelganger, a Mox Emerald and a Lord of the Pit. See what he snuck in there? He even mentioned "I know this Emerald was expensive when I first opened it and I paid $15 each for those Shivan Dragons." He effectively sold a Mox Emerald and thousands of old, junk commons and bulk rares for about five times the value of the Emerald.
This is especially effective because the first thing a suspicious person is going to look for is "do they know what they have?" When he says sure, the Emerald is worth more and he's sure the Dragons are, too, you're going to trust him and believe that he's got box brimming with dual lands. A good con man knows how to disarm all of these warning bells and replace them with a slobbering, greedy imp in your head that shrieks "rip this poor sucker off!"
When you see something suspiciously placed in an auction, stay away. The Tropical Island next to Thoughtlace is a trap.
There are "hot words" and phrases that should instantly scream SCAM.
Let's begin with the obvious: if it says "found in a closet/basement/yard sale," it is a scam.
If they were cards that a roommate or a boyfriend left, it's a scam. Nobody leaves 10,000 magic cards at their ex's house if there's anything of value in there. Magic players are not stupid people.
If someone says "I really don't know anything about them and don't have the time or desire to learn so I am just going to let these auctions run their course and let you guys decide what they are worth," it's a scam. That's from a "crazy ex-boyfriend" auction. Most people who know how to use the internet know someone who plays Magic. Alternately, they Google "how much are Magic cards worth?" and see a bunch of Yahoo answers of people saying "take these to a local game store and they will give you a fair price. They are worth a lot."
Any sob story is a scam. Occasionally, the mom selling the cards in the closet happens at yard sales. It does not happen on eBay.
How far can people take this?
Or as a corollary, how stupid can people be? Just take a look at this auction:
Tip: you can click on the image to view a larger version.
Ebay deletes listings after three months, so see it while you can - this is #220940463434 and it's worth looking at for a study in scammery. I don't expect that any Insider would bid on this obvious hustle, but you can see many hallmarks of a good scammer. Why have they only taken pictures of money cards in the binder? The green page has a few cropped hints at what's on the other side - Reiki, History of Kamigawa and Midsummer Revel, among other stinkers. If they didn't know what was in the collection, why did they photograph this page of solid gold instead of that one? The trend miraculously continues across all other images. Where's the binder page with Celestial Dawn, Spiritual Focus, Raksha the Slayer and other stinkers? It's in there, but you'll only see it if you win this pile of crap.
Further, anyone taking a photo of a page full of rares has got to be curious about what they're worth. They would likely punch in "Rofellos" into eBay, see that it's worth money, and then at least list him in the auction description.
This is a good scam from a scammer's prospective because they turned about $120 in rares from expensive times of Magic into $3,100. You could set this whole thing up in a weekend afternoon if you felt inclined. The scammer messed up one thing, though - one thing that could have gotten them possibly another thousand dollars.
They don't have any feedback.
A few bucks spent on buying t-shirts with cats on them, a new towel rod and a home decorating book could have easily sold the "we found this in the attic" story.
Don't be scared - be informed!
This shouldn't scare you off of buying collections on eBay, but it should educate you about the warning signs to notice. I suggest sticking to buying collections of rares that are listed and photographed; that don't have phony 'found in closet' stories attached; and that are valued at about what you'd pay for the listed cards, anyway. I invite people who have had successful and intelligent collection purchases on eBay to let me know what your experience was like in the comments section below!
Until next week,
Doug Linn
(I actually have a page with Celestial Dawn, Spiritual Focus and Raksha the Slayer in a binder :\ )
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It’s Standard PTQ season! This particular season seems to be coming in quietly and escaping notice. The Standard season is usually one of the more popular ones because players already have most of the necessary cards. I think the main reason events this season are not getting more attention is due to stores having taken them over from large tournament organizers.
Most of the stores I have been to are drastically unprepared to run an event of this caliber. Often, they're not even prepared to host an event larger than thirty players.
Most of them also haven't done much to advertise their PTQs. If you are not doing a lot of research yourself, you are likely unaware where or when they are happening. Before, tournament organizers would publish all their events for the upcoming season so it was easy to locate the PTQs near you. Now, things are much more chaotic.
As this season lasts until the middle of August there are lots of opportunities to qualify.
I for one am looking to finally earn a spot on the Pro Tour. To that end, I researched the Avacyn Restored Standard events that have happened so far. The Star City Games events in both Providence, Rhode Island and Madison, Wisconsin will be influential in setting up the metagame for this season. Between the two events we have forty-eight deck lists to look at so far. Here is a chart of those decks broken down by deck type.
If we restrict our view to the decks that made top 8, we can dissect some more data.
The first thing I notice is that neither mono-red nor the random control decks broke into top eight. At least for now, Delver seems to remain the top dog even with the new Avacyn Restored cards. G/R Aggro continues to do well too, and seeing as it won both events, it might actually be the best deck.
The other options are solid as well. All six of these archetypes seem like good choices for a PTQ.
Remember you want to select a deck that is generally powerful and consistent, because your goal at a PTQ is not merely to top-eight, but to win the entire event. Also make sure to factor in your familiarity with viable decks. If you have a lot of experience with Solar Flare, for example, it might be the best choice even though it has lower results so far.
Digging Deeper for New Strategies
When looking at statistics, it is important to think about the ones that are not present as well.
Zombies, for example, found a zero percent success rate these past two weeks. I would say that no matter what color you are playing with Zombies, the deck just isn't good enough right now. The reason for this, in my opinion, is its lack of high impact cards. If the Zombie deck is going to compete, it is going to need to change drastically.
One way to accomplish this would be to alter the basic premise of the deck. Zombies is typically an aggressive black deck splashing blue or red. If we change this premise to include other colors, we might find a better version of the deck. Luckily other players are also working on this concept. One player in particular has been doing well on Magic Online splashing white in Zombies for Lingering Souls and Oblivion Ring.
This past week, I was working on this idea for FNM. The list I played was terrible but I did learn a lot about the deck. Here is an updated version:
B/W Zombies
Untitled Deck
Creatures
4 Gravecrawler
4 Diregraf Ghoul
4 Porcelain Legionnaire
4 Geralfs Messenger
4 Solemn Simulacrum
3 Grave Titan
Spells
3 Distress
4 Lingering Souls
3 Oblivion Ring
3 Go for the Throat
1 Sever the Bloodline
Lands
4 Isolated Chapel
4 Evolving Wilds
1 Vault of the Archangel
1 Plains
13 Swamp
As you can see, this is not your average Zombie deck. There are a lot of changes here, all based on solid theories.
One of my main problems with the Zombie deck, no matter what color you choose as your splash, is that the two-drops are terrible. I thought I would fix this with Blood Artist. Don’t get me wrong, Blood Artist did provide a powerful effect, but having zero power was too big of a drawback.
What it boils down to is Blood Artist plays more like an enchantment than a creature. When I drew it in a hand with one or two one-drop guys it was quite powerful. But when I didn't have a one-drop it became basically unplayable. However, the effect is powerful, and it may be playable on an actual body such as Falkenrath Noble.
I have not gotten a chance to test [card Falkenrath Noble]Noble[/card] yet, but I did find a much better card to fill the two-drop slot.
It took a bit of searching to find Porcelain Legionnaire, which has been almost completely forgotten. This card used to see some play in Standard, even in a few Zombie decks. When Gut Shot became incredibly popular, players removed the phyrexian-mana creature from their decks. Now that Gut Shot barely sees play, Porcelain Legionnaire is a great addition again. This creature is even well-positioned right now with threats like Strangleroot Geist seeing so much play.
The other two-drop I added was Distress. In the previous version, I played Distress in the sideboard and I noticed myself sideboarding the card in a lot more than I had planned. I think Distress is in a great place right now. Often your opponent has just a few high impact cards in their deck. If you strip one from their hand, their game plan becomes flimsy until they can topdeck another high-impact spell.
What about this whole ramp package? I know its hard to believe, but Solem Simulacrum is one of the best cards here and I was never unhappy to see him. He has a relevant body, fixes your somewhat awkward mana, and gets you the extra mana you need to cast a high end threat.
Standard is not as fast as many people would believe. There is plenty of time to set up a game plan and execute it. By adding Solemn Simulacrum and Grave Titan, Zombies becomes more of a midrange deck with occasional explosive starts.
Once you land it, very few decks are prepared to deal with a Grave Titan. You could easily replace him with Wurmcoil Engine or Batterskull, which have similar effect, but for now I think the black titan provides the most impact.
You can see that we've certainly met our goal of drastically altering the deck.
The addition of white mana to the deck is also quite good. We all know Lingering Souls is insane, but this deck might be the best place for it in Standard. When all of your creatures get killed, you can untap and not only bring back Gravecrawler, but also flashback Lingering Souls to rebuild your board presence all in one turn.
Lingering Souls also provides support for Grave Titan. An endless stream of tokens gives you enough time to reach six mana for your haymaker.
You may be asking why Sorin Lord of Innistrad was not included when we're already splashing white. The short answer is that he was just not very good. He did not have as large of an impact on games as I had imagined. He may require some more testing, but I don't think he belongs in this deck.
Making a Choice
This list is not set in stone. There are more changes that may need to be made, but hopefully the process I've gone through is clear. Zombies cannot be a competitive deck in its current state, so we introduce some drastic changes to reposition it.
This type of strategy is what you want to aim for if you want to compete with a rogue deck. Make sure each card is included for a reason, then test your theories to make sure they are valid.
If you want to play this deck, I would recommend testing it first because it plays very differently than the old Zombies deck.
Choosing a deck for a Pro Tour Qualifier can be a tough challenge. One way to do it is to construct a rogue deck to fight the specific metagame you expect. The other way is to play a top tier deck. Choosing any version of Delver, for example, would be a great choice because of how much success it has had. Players may expect it, but the deck is good enough to succeed despite that. If you are making your deck choice on power level alone, the numbers suggest that both Delver and G/R Aggro are the appropriate choices.
Most importantly, play a deck that you enjoy and have played before. Experience counts for a lot.
I hope this information about the metagame has been insightful and helpful. Have fun at your Pro Tour Qualifiers and hopefully you will find success. What deck are you planning to take? Feel free to post them in the comments below.
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So, funny thing: I was planning on having to sleep in my car.
Photo courtesy of starcitygames.com
Bet you didn't expect that for an opening statement. Let's be honest, I didn't want to pay for a hotel and there was only one comment left on my request to crash with people. Why? Rooms were already 6+ people and, at a certain point, it becomes more of a hindrance to add more.
I did try to contact the person I was told to contact but things didn't work out. Lucky for me, I stopped by one of the weekly Legacy tournaments to return some cards I was borrowing to Steve Farkas, and it turns out I wasn't the only lone person planning on going. Also lucky for me, they thought the trip was only going to take 3 hours.
If you don't know, Minneapolis and Madison are about 4 ½ hours apart.
So I tell them that they should probably leave sooner than wait until the morning.
We end up leaving at 6ish because traffic was pretty bad getting to them. Minnesota has two seasons: winter and construction. Plan accordingly.
Steve found Dylan Streater and Alex Olson to fill the car. We get gas and Steve books a hotel while we talk about how credit cards allow for inflated pricing, making it harder to live without one... basically I bore them for about an hour.
Most people have complex stories about the places they go, but, unfortunately for you, our only stop was Culver's. Granted, it was my first time ever going to Culver's and I wasn't impressed. I think it should come with whatever it obviously has in the picture. Apparently you have to ask to have the lettuce and tomato on your burger?
It didn't help that this particular Culver's also messed up Dylan's order and he even had to go back up to get his shake/malt/frosty or whatever it is people are calling them these days. Either way, I'd prefer to go to McDonald's next time. They have great breakfast at 4am, but that's it.
I guess I don't have to tell you that we showed up to the event and played. So let's just skip to the 'action'.
My opponent is newer to Legacy, which isn't as uncommon as you might think. Unfortunately for newer Legacy players, that means they're typically found playing something from a smaller pool of decks. Typically Maverick, Blade (Esper or traditional) or Canadian Thresh (RUG Tempo for anyone not too familiar).
Game 1 I'm on the draw. Luckily for me, my hand is 1st turn Bob, Liliana, Wastelands and Thoughtseize. When Bob sticks and comes back to me, I know the game is pretty much over. My opponent starts discarding and then I start Wasting away. My opponent does discard Lingering Souls but had no black mana to bring it back.
I eventually land another creature and finish things up a bit faster than 2x2.
Out - 3x Mox Diamond, 1x Swords to Plowshares, 1x Inquisition, 1x Thoughtseize. In - 2x Choke, 2x Thalia, 1x Pernicious Deed, 1x Gaddock Teeg
I know it may seem weird to pull out some Swords and some discard, but you can't always fight things pre-emptively. Sometimes you have to plan for the worst. Hence, Deed. Thalia, Teeg, and Choke deal with the rest.
Game 2 involves a Choke on turn 2 via Green Sun Zenith into Dryad Arbor. My opponent had played Stoneforge Mystic... Choke landed. The game was over shortly after on the back of my Stoneforge. I wish I could say more but this matchup requires you to draw pretty poorly in order to lose. The Esper deck is fine to just keep jamming spells against until something sticks. Bait as much as possible. Choke + friends will do the rest.
After that I notice that we're one of the first tables done. I turn in the slip and walk away. I see Bennett walking up to turn in his slip so I know he's won. I start checking on the other players from Minnesota are. Most people are looking pretty good, which is nice. Unfortunately, I start thinking about how, if we're all doing well, we'll have to play. We all didn't drive 4 1/2 hours to play against people I could have driven 10 minutes to see. So I start sending up chants to reporter to avoid people I know.
During the downtime Mike Hawthorne asks me if I have an English Scavenging Ooze(s)... turns out another friend didn't know exactly what Ooze did... He had 3x Chinese Ooze in his deck. I pull mine out and start to hand it to Hawthorne, he tells me that he wants to find the other two before we all swap Ooze.
- In case you're new, or just not sure, you can swap cards as long as it's for the exact same card. So no Scavenging Ooze for Tarmogoyf. Scavenging Ooze for Scavenging Ooze is fine, though, regardless of language.
Round 2 vs Deadguy Ale (B/W Aggro)
Prayers answered. Reporter sets me up against someone I didn't know.
I sit down and introduce myself. My opponent tells me he's been playing since Revised. It's nice to see someone who's been playing about as long as I have. There are a lot of people who have only begun to play. Unfortunately, as far as being able to guess on what my opponent's been playing, all bets are off.
Side note: Something about most who have been playing for a while: we tend to stop playing and sell our collections only to come back. I myself am rebuilding after my last sale. This time with a new rule: I can only use money from tournaments (-entry fee) to buy cards.
Game 1 doesn't start off the way I want it to. I don't remember my opening hand. Instead, I remember my opponent's plays in order. Let me list them:
Turn 1, Scrubland, Mother of Ruins (Mom)
Turn 2, Plains, Dark Confidant (Bob)
Turn 3, Scrubland, Liliana.
That's terrible for me. It was like he was building a script for a movie or something. Everything had a face. Plus it's Mother's Day here and now I have to kill Mom!
Only problem, I didn't have a Swords for the Mom (drew it the turn after she went active). He drew tons of cards off of Bob. And Liliana killed my only creature... Now look at my plays.
Turn 1, Thoughtseize, take Swords
Turn 2, Stoneforge, get Jitte.
Turn 3, Pridemage, drew Swords.
So what does that mean? It means Mom died on turn 4, trying to give herself protection from the Jitte equipped Pridemage (reminder, Pridemage was big enough to survive Bob blocking if he had gone that route), Liliana was forced to comment Harikari to save Bob from the Jitte wielding Pridemage next turn, and Bob... Bob was hunted down shortly after. I took the game from there.
Out - 3x Thoughtseize, 1x Inquisition In - 2x Dismember, 1x Ulvenwald Tracker, 1x Pernicious Deed.
While I'm boarding, the table next to us is talking about how judges are terrible Magic players. All kinds of jokes. I shake my head and let them keep going. We're all at the X-0 table and I'm a judge, but there's no point picking a fight.
It's Magic. I'll let them be ignorant an have fun laughing at them on the inside. "Those who can't play, judge. Those who can't, just suck." Good job guys, you at least made me chuckle.
Anywho, back to the match.
Deadguy's bodies aren't particularly large. Landing anything of size, or exalted, would be enough to kill them with tracker. It also helps to keep Mom tapped on their turn. This usually leads to her dead on yours.
Beyond that, it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out: "Kill Everything." Discard is pointless since the only thing you'll really want to discard is Liliana. Just realize that Deed will destroy your Mox every time you use it... It's your Deed. Plan and play accordingly.
Game 2 is a slaughter. I kill his Mom (Happy Mother's Day... too soon?) and play Stoneforge and Bob. From there, the game is over shortly.
I wish my opponent luck and thank him for the conversation. It's always nice to meet players who have been in it for a while. The games rarely feel as serious with them. You're never mad at losing unless you personally do something really stupid (or your opponent's a jerk... but I suppose we're not all nice all of the time). Then you're more upset with yourself.
I hoped my opponent would make it to the top and we'd meet in the finals but a loss this early meant the odds were against him. That doesn't mean I can't hope for it though.
A couple of Minnesota people are done, and some had even come to see how my match was going. Most people are still doing well.
That means the odds of us playing are getting better. 🙁
I run into Bennett again and he tells me about how he won his match. I tell him about how I defeated my opponents. We joke for a little while and talk about how we'll just play in the finals (Epic Foreshadowing).
Round 3 vs Canadian Thresh
My opponent is playing Canadian Thresh. In Iowa he absolutely destroyed me with a smile and in round 2 beat my friend Troy, who, to my knowledge, hasn't played a ton of Magic recently.
I didn't go out the night before the tournament, so I figured I'd give him a better game than the last time where I cast dismember before declaring all blockers, making his attack lethal. I can't spell out everything. Make an assumption on why you think I'd do that.
This match is on camera. If you didn't catch it, this will do more justice than words:
Out - 3x Thoughtseize, 1x Inquisition, 2x Liliana In - 2x Thalia, 2x Choke, 2x Timely Reinforcements
So, after being down a game and since I was on camera, it was time to make someone else happy.
Enter Timely reinforcements. Choke and Thalia are the real things you want to do, and Liliana is actually supposed to stay, but I know I can do this without worry. You can also bring in Teeg, but post board they typically take out their Forces to bring in more relevant solutions (Submerge).
If you're playing this deck and can't get used to playing without a Forest (since you have Mox, Birds and Canopy), I'd suggest leaving in
the Thoughtseize and trimming elsewhere.
The reason you take out the discard on the play is that you get to fetch right away. I'm a basics whore. I admit it. I'll actually fetch a basic even if I may not be able to get my colors in time to curve. Why? I'd rather cast my spells than look at lands in the yard. It's fine when you have Knight and are threatening lethal, but what are you going to do before?
Also, if you'll notice, I don't like Forests in this match-up. I accidentally fetch one (if memory serves me correctly - it was a long day and I played 3 Canadian Thresh decks under the camera). I normally fetch the other two basics because I don't like having to wait for a night to shuffle my deck.
Can't submerge without five mana or me having a forest.
Round 4 vs Nic Fit (Real Rock)
I sit down and my opponent has... Judge Sleeves! This is the way Magic is meant to be played.
Judges have way too much fun doing things together. My opponent and I are pretty much in joke mode the entire match. I'd tell you one but I'm afraid my memory isn't the greatest right now (yup, that cop-out).
Game 1 is a disaster I keep a hand with Bob, Stoneforge, Knight, Pulse and the mana to cast it all. Want to know what all I cast? Bird and Top... Yup.
I was out of the game at that point. He followed up with Thrun and Liliana to keep the game.
Out - 3x Mox Diamond, 1x Inquisition, 1x Thoughtseize In - 2x Thalia, 2x Timely Reinforcements (this was a bad call), 1x Dismember (also a bad call)
Nic Fit is the only 50-50 that I've really found. It is The Rock and his Millions re-popularized by Caleb Durward. If you don't know that deck, it's currently called "The Rock". The deck is designed to stop creature based strategies. Not to say that it doesn't work against me, but I just operate in a similar fashion.
Game 2 my opponent doesn't have Explorer-Therapy to abuse as discard and ramp. I proceed to waste my opponent and play threats. Lucky for me, Knight fetches more Wastelands and gets bigger at the same time. The game ended shortly after due to Knight's growth rate.
Out - 2 Timely Reinforcements, 1x Dismember In - 3x Surgical Extraction
Game 3 is a bit longer. No blowout either way.
We get about 7 turns in and the boards are both lands. LOTS OF LANDS. He had blown Deed to kill off my team. He wouldn't let me bait with Stoneforge + Goyf since he had drawn Ooze. I really tried to get him to blow it so I could drop Bob. Instead I had to give him up too.
The next turn he Zenith'd for another Ooze and I, instead of letting him gain tons of life and everything else, decide to Bog myself. His Ooze hit me for 3 and then dies to Pulse. We topdeck'd some more (about 8 turns) and then I was reminded of why I used to have a Sun Titan in the list from 8-24-10.
Remember, just because it didn't work for you doesn't mean it doesn't work... in this case amazingly well.
When his Sun Titan hit and he pulled back Deed and I really wanted some kind of removal. I realized I had used 2 Swords already and 2 Pulses. 1 Liliana was in exile as well. That meant I didn't actually have too many things to deal with it. I could take him Deeding me again, I couldn't take him getting back an army.
My draw? Horizon Canopy. Well, we're not dead yet... Draw with Canopy... Bayou. Ouch. He swung on his turn (I Mazed this time, of course), but that wasn't the issue. He brought back Ooze. Liliana was out. Removal count down to 3. I drew again, Savannah, and scooped them up.
We realized at that point that we had amassed a group of people who were watching us.
Why? We were playing. And having fun.
You draw people when the game is fun. We hadn't noticed that we were being watched. There was even a judge laughing right next to me. I never realized the match next to us had even finished. My opponent and I shook hands, exchanged some small banter and moved on.
Even with the loss, I didn't worry about it at all. Besides, it's always fun when two judges play.
After the game I ran into the people from Minnesota. Most were either X-0 or X-1. Happy that we were all still in contention. I don't have time to do much since the next round is up shortly after.
Round 5 vs Esperblade
When I sit down my opponent is wearing a Vikings Jersey. Don't know the Vikings? It's Minnesota's local Football Team.
I don't know this person though. I was pretty sure I knew of everyone who had come down. So I start asking. Turns out he's just wearing the jersey for the Punter... a former Packer. Yeah, we normally take their good players. We can't really make good choices by ourselves.
(I wish he had made an offer to Vick of Favre. We actually had a line that could defend and enough breakout speed to keep people afraid of rushing in. Just my own opinion though...)
Game 1 I don't really remember too much from it. Sorry, I got nothing. I know my opponent only had a couple of lands in play at the end and scooped at the second knight.
Out - Same as above In - Same as above
I make mention of my opponents almost full mat of PTQ T8 pins and keep going. I don't use a mat anymore so I can't put a pin on anything. 🙁
Game 2 I make a serious play error that costs me the game.
What was it? Simple. My opponent plays Jace and has 2 Lingering Souls tokens. He fate seals himself as I have Library active. I have Thalia, Bob, and Dryad Arbor on the field. In hand I have Pulse and Deed with enough mana to do one or the other. So, what do I do?
I'll tell you what I don't do. Pulse the tokens and kill Jace.
No, I Deed the tokens... See the flaw? Dead Arbor... That meant 4 damage.
Now, I had started to lay the Deed on the field and tried to not cast it, but my opponent said that since I had touched it to the table (a corner hit) I had played it. I didn't feel like arguing since I know it takes me drawing dead for me to lose 3 and this game wasn't gone yet. So I just go with it. I lose because he gets to Brainstorm twice before I can kill it with damage, countering my Pulse the next turn. Oh well.
Game 3 I keep a one lander on the play. Why? Zenith, Library, and Choke. I chuckle to myself a bit about it. My Zenith resolves and the Arbor survives to my upkeep! I get excited.
He had Pondered so I could draw a land and choke him this turn! So I draw... Bird?! WTH deck! I wanted a land. Not something I have to wait until next turn to use.
I play the Bird anyway and pass. My opponent plays Stoneforge getting Jitte. I Choke him. Fetch-land for basic plains... He's one land away from playing it. I draw Stoneforge!!! And go get my Jitte, thinking I'd just legend rule his. He plays a Karakas. So, what do I do?
Still at land, Arbor, Bird for mana. I have in hand: Thalia, Batterskull, Jitte, Pulse, Library.
I vial in the Batterskull... He puts the Jitte into play, equips to the Stoneforge on his turn, Swords the skull and swings. I'm down to 1 land... Lucky for me, I draw one and play Library.
If you've ever wondered what makes green able to compete when you're opponent thinks you've already lost, it's Library.
I find answers for everything he is doing. Everything except playing non-islands. I can't find a Karakas. I can't find a Wasteland. HECK, I can't even find a Knight! I mean, it's nice and all that my Jitte killed his Jitte. His Batterskull token got Sworded, Thalia makes Lingering Souls cost 4 so he can't play it. PS: Thalia's a legend, which was missed by my opponent's Karakas for most of the game.
But I can find threats with lands galore and my opponent is having to use every Sword he has access to.
In the end, I robbed this game from my opponent. And he wasn't happy about it at all. You couldn't cut the tension with a knife. We complete the post game rituals (gg's and all) and go our separate ways.
The only issue? Now I'm not in a happy mood. What happened to Round 4? I lost that game but it wasn't to your opponent punting into gold mines, which is what happened here. I didn't feel I deserved Game 3 and I could have cared less about Game 2.
I go talk to a couple people. One of the guys I came with is offering to get food.
He wanted 5 Guys but I've had their Burgers and they're average to me. Most people love them. I don't. As far as the Fries go, when you're hungry, they're amazing. But, I'm hungry so I convince him to go somewhere else, hand him money, then change my mind less than 2 minutes later. He laughs, asks for the keys, which I forgot were in my pocket, and takes off.
Round 6 vs Maverick
I see the name of my opponent (something I don't normally notice) and it's a friend of mine from Minnesota.
Great, I knew this was going to happen eventually. We meet at the table and agree to split whatever we make. He's not happy about the match-up because he knows I've been tuning this deck for a while. It's my pet deck. This game goes super casual, really fast (we keep the rules... yup).
Game 1 when I fetch my third land he flashes in Aven Mindcensor and I'm pretty much dead from there. I play a Stoneforge and start searching (finish this before you judge). He knocks on his Aven Mindcensor to call my attention... I don't even notice what he knocked on. Then he picks it up and starts waving it in my face.
I'm still clueless, laughing, thinking he's being funny, and I'm actually laughing because it is. Then he reminds me of what that card does... Oops.
What he doesn't realize is that I've got almost everything already racked up and am digging for cards to take out and have already pulled the cards from my sideboard. We both break out into laughter and it's on to game 2.
Out - 3x Thoughtseize, 1x Inquisition In - 1x Ulvenwald Tracker, 2x Dismember, 1x Pernicious Deed
No Timely Reinforcements in this one. I'm not on camera and even though they provide off color'd creatures (since Stoneforge is the only pure white creature in the deck), they only buy a little bit of time. I'd rather go with plan B: Kill EVERYTHING!
Game 2 starts and I kill his Mom (again with the Mother killing on Mother's Day). Next turn it's Bob, then Pulse for his Library. Kill everything is an effective plan.
Game 3 I mull to 5 and keep. I have 2 lands! I'm excited.
The people next to us are nervous because we've been all over the place (literally, I think I rested my head on one of them at one point). We start playing and I Sword his Mom! From there I get a Top and it looks like I might be able to be in this, but he just goes pure aggro and drops body after body.
Luckily Liliana had a blocker and was just making us discard. He drops all but the last card in hand and Liliana goes to 2. He thinks I'm going to edict him so his clock is slower. What he doesn't know is that I've already resigned the game to me finding Deed or nothing.
Discard... Parallax Wave goes to the Bin. Liliana dies on his next attack. When I top, at his end step, after fetching, Deed is the third card down. I draw the Deed and Play it. Next turn I go to 3 from the attack.
At this point, when I untap I have choices. He didn't find an answer with his library and is at 4 because of it. I really haven't hit him at all.
So, I pop Top and crack Deed so he can't continue to look and go to pass the turn. He flashes in Aven Mindcensor... Everyone cheers. I throw a Swords on it and give a cry of victory. Everyone laughs at us.
I know There's a Thalia on top of my deck and play it. Next turn it's a Knight. He did find another creature but I had already hit him down to 2.
I Pulse the creature and swing for lethal. We joke a bit and he tells me I better win. I tell him it's in the bag. Combo and Burn are out and it's all easy street from here on out.
Round 7 vs Aggro Loam
(Just FYI, I get really lazy from this point of writing on. Look at how long this is! Why on earth did someone let me win this thing?)
If you've ever played against Pat you know it's an event. Pat is hilarious and I'm pretty sure that if we could record Pat on a regular basis he would be the new standard for comedy. I'll put it this way, though. We played three games on paper but it was really only 1.
Game 1 Pat is in control, entirely. Game 2, we play Magic. Game 3, Pat's land availability was lacking leaving him out of the match.
It's never fun to knock a friend out of contention
Round 8 Vs Canadian Thresh.
Bennett and I ID into T8.
We joke about how Round 2 we'd split in the finals.
Then it starts. Everyone that we run into is telling us we just drew ourselves out of top 8. Oh crap. Tension sets in and we're pretty much thinking, "Crap! We hope we didn't just screw this up for one of us."
Lucky for us we're in 7th and 8th. Deal.
At this point We enter Top 8. I'd give you the low down for my top 8 match but video does it much better:
Lucky for me I don't have to worry too much about the car ride back. 5 ½-ish hours after we leave the event site (and one Big Mac with a Vanilla Shake in place of a drink) I get back home. Crawl into bed, get right back out and get on Facebook to say thank you to all the people who tagged me in their status'.
If you're interested in the deck, you can catch semi-weekly updated videos at http://youtube.com/damionblackgear.
PS: Celebrated Roller Coaster day at the Mall of America at 10am the next morning. Best end to this weekend. Ever.
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I’m not sure if you heard or not, but there was a Pro Tour recently. But of course you have. In fact, it would be a miracle if you… (Never mind, can’t bring myself to do it).
This week we’re going to look at the movement of the Pro Tour and what it means going forward. But first I wanted to finally wrap up the Collection Flipping Case Study and answer a few of the questions raised in the comments of last week’s article.
From Slack:
As for when to sell: my advice is immediately. I always start with the cheap stuff and sell everything as singles to dealers until I've recuperated all, or the largest part of, my investment. Sometimes that leaves you with one or two prize cards, sometimes a ton more, but you're then poised to re-invest that money into another collection while you slow grind the good stuff. Plus, it makes your efforts immediately apparent and easy to determine. (ie "It took me X dollars and Y hours to earn this pile of cards in my hand")
This is the approach I’ve traditionally taken, but I changed it up last time for a few reasons. The first is that, frankly, capital is not a problem for me. I don’t make a lot of money as a journalist, but I’m lucky enough to be debt-free after college and live in a state (Oklahoma) with a very low cost of living. A product of my upbringing, I’m very frugal and would rather save money than buy something, even sometimes when it’s something I need. As a result, I don’t mind leaving some money in cardboard for a few extra weeks because it’s not going to prevent me from buying again if something came along. There’s a lot to the “don’t tie up your money” argument, but it’s not something I’ve had to worry about.
The thing I like most about that approach is the easy “x-y” comparison you mentioned, which is why I tried to track my efforts in that area.
The point was also raised by Pi:
What I missed in these articles was something like a time versus reward analysis. You put in $80, made about $45, how many hours were spent to do this? Also, what would the results have looked like if you did not find a very good deal for the Foil Mage, Foil Mystic and the Wasteland?
With the traveling and extra effort, $45 feels like it might not constitute a very good hourly rate.
First off, I should clear up that the foil Snaps, Mystic and Wasteland weren’t included in any of my figures. I was ready to roll them into the collection, but since I was able to move them separately I instead treated them as a standalone deal since I was able to trade/sell them separately. I basically made a free Wasteland on that particular deal.
On the time/money issue, you guys are completely right. I didn’t make this clear enough last week. Between buying the collection, trading it and then pricing it out again, I spent about four or so hours on it, meaning I only “made” about $10 an hour. Trading out of the collection didn’t really cost me anything in terms of time, since I was already going to be trading from my regular stuff anyway. While the $45 number certainly is not great, what that figure doesn’t show is the value I added to my “regular” trade value.
As I more or less just put some of the extra profits from each individual trade into it and didn’t keep track quite as much there, I can conservatively estimate I added another $40-50 in retail value to my binder. This works out to about $25-30 in cash, so if you add that to the previous number you’ll find my hourly wage was closer to $16-18 an hour, which is something I can get behind.
One more:
I disagree with forcing all to one outlet. I have 4 sites that I sell to for various reasons and easily make more than the shipping in the difference in the buy prices.
I can go a little deeper into this now that I’ve spoken to Chris, the shop owner at White Lion Games in Texas, the store I ultimately sold to. I first met Chris at SCG Dallas last year, and we worked out a very good trade for both of us, wherein he took my Standard goodies and I came away with a Volcanic Island. He told me then to let him know when I was selling and he could cut me a deal, so I went back to them this time around.
I sent Chris my spreadsheet with the offers from the stores I had, and he matched or nearly matched the prices on every card. By opening a line of communication with a dealer, I was able to get the prices I wanted on my stuff and have the ease of moving it all to one place. This essentially netted me that money I would have spent in shipping to separate stores.
Lessons learned from the Pro Tour
I won’t bore you with a bunch of paragraphs on what you’ve already read. Wolfir Silverheart will not sustain its current price, and you should get out immediately. You probably have another 7-10 days or so if you’re cashing out to a buylist, and probably a little less on Ebay (and this article might give you some more insight to flipping on Ebay).
Get out of these before the bubble pops.
Instead, I have a different tack to touch on regarding the Wolf, and it’s a lesson the last two Pro Tours have drilled into me.
I was the first one to break the Wolfir tip. I have a friend who was at the PT who passed on to me that SCG “broke” the format with their Silverheart decks, and that the card was selling at $12 on site. I fired off an e-mail to Doug to send out to Insiders, and I tweeted it for the super late-night crowd. And then I found out that it was selling for 12 EUROS, not dollars, which is even more insane.
So I was farther ahead of the Wolfir curve than just about anyone else, and I thought about a move. I looked at TCGPlayer and saw there were a number available for under $2. The problem was that no store had more than 2-3 at that price. I also knew that the Pro Tour wasn’t going to truly affect Standard a great deal due to the banning of Lingering Souls and Intangible Virtue. With that in mind, I figured it was a $5-6 card and that made it a great trading target, but not a good cash buy. I picked some up trading at FNM on Friday and felt pretty good about myself.
Check back three days later. I was unable to watch much Pro Tour coverage due to work, and missed the Top 8. Of course by now Silverheart is $10 everywhere that still has it, and dealers are buying at $5. Clearly a failed move on my part. The sad part was that I did the same thing with Huntmaster of the Fells. I received the tip from the Pro Tour and even wrote about it the day before the Pro Tour. I could have gotten in on the card at $8, but the fear (which I’ve written about before) got to me, and again all I did was trade for a few copies before the spike.
Looking back on these two experiences, I’ve drawn a few conclusions that may seem obvious in retrospect, but oftentimes get overlooked.
It’s all about the Pro Tour
SCG Opens are nice. Grand Prix are cool. They don’t mean much. The Pro Tour, on the other hand, means everything. I can only assume the huge amount of coverage the PT gets is what accounts for this.
I’ve speculated on cards that make a showing at an Open and it rarely works out well. Same goes for Grand Prix. I made okay money on the Hive Minds I bought after that deck won a GP, but I would have made tenfold that if it had been a Pro Tour. If you’re going to speculate early and take a risk, do it on a Pro Tour deck and not any other event. Had I thought about this more, I would have certainly gone in hard on Huntmasters when I had the chance, and would have profited nicely from it.
Speculation rules the market
Silverheart is a $5-8 card for its life in Standard after this, but that didn’t stop the price from rocketing well past $10 this week. This card will do nothing but go down from this point on, and if you got in early, now’s the time to get out.
We see it happen all the time, like with Food Chain recently. Whether it’s driven by speculators or player demand, card prices react so vociferously to speculation in the market that underlying principles are simply ignored. As long as you’re fast enough, you have plenty of time to capitalize on these moves. I prefer the steady, “blue-chip” plays like Fetchlands more than I like to play the “bet on X bulk card,” but there’s room for both in your strategy.
Miracles
It wasn’t in Hayne’s winning deck, but I really think the best Miracle post-rotation is going to be Bonfire of the Damned. The reason is that, like all the miracles, it’s obviously good off the top of your deck. But I’ve also seen it cast for three mana a lot of the time to clear out Spirit tokens and allow Strangleroots to bash in. With the Pro Tour more attention will be paid to Terminus and Entreat, but while Terminus is a fine play at $5, I don’t like moving in on Entreat at $20.
Bonfire, though, hasn’t got quite as much press from the Pro Tour. It had its spike and is now out of stock at $15 on SCG and is higher than that at TCGPlayer. I’m pretty comfortable getting in on this now, especially if SCG doesn’t raise their price for a little bit. I do think all of these cards will come down in the coming months, especially since there are so many money cards people are trying to bust right now. That will cause more and more packs to be opened, and will in turn bring down prices.
That’s it for this week. On a personal note, it's been a good run for me of late. I’ve begun writing biweekly on Legitmtg.com, and you can check out my first article here. I’ll be writing about financial matters there, but don’t worry, the hot tips are staying here. You can also check out my podcast with Marcel and Ryan Bushard over at BrainstormBrewery.com.
And, in the most exciting bit of news, I get married in 16 days!
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This weekend was a busy one. Between Pro Tour: Avacyn Restored and SCG Madison we have a ton of deck lists to talk about. These events, the Pro Tour especially, have driven the price of some singles that no one could have predicted would be so useful.
What is the world coming to? Who won the Pro Tour? I’ll get to that in a bit. First, though, let’s have our dessert.
My recommended first pics
Nothing funnier than a rabbit playing goldfish
Redditor rick 21n brings us this comic that you may have seen before. Not only is it good to see Magic mentioned, it's good to see a distinction made between "nerd", "geek" and "dork."
Finally a game where green black zombies are viable
Redditor MrPKMNBattler brings us the Minecraft design he has in progress: the beginnings of a very detailed rendering on the back of a Magic card. It looks pretty good, though maybe a bit tough to shuffle unassisted.
Avengers Assemble!
A low key addition to any deck. Get it? Low key? Loki? ... There's no impressing you people
Redditor Alopex brings us this altered Wurmcoil Engine inspired by "The Avengers." Nice find!
He also thought Fury referred to Hawkeye as "agent Balthor" and spent half the movie mentally building an EDH deck
Redditor Bladewing10 was distracted during the movie by what he thought he heard. He's not alone. I could have sworn I heard it, too. When people asked why I was laughing during the movie, I told them I was thinking about that picture of Jeremy Renner's mullet.
Friendship is Magic: the Gathering
MLP and MTG: the only 2 times where Magic has 5 elements
Redditor Kingtomy found this pic and asked why anyone would do this to power. Funny enough, the cards actually belong to Redditor Solaran_X who responded in the thread. His response? It's a Brony thing; you wouldn't understand.
This computer will blow your mind like your name was Tezzeret
Redditor Fork-H brings us picture from the packaging on his new PC. No thanks; I'm looking for a modern PC, not one that's banned in Modern.
But which way does the card go in?
Redditor Xavierwoodshed noticed the idiot-proofing on a pack of sleeves. Honestly, if you needed this kind of help, maybe Magic isn't the game for you.
One giant leap backward for people trying to convince their friends Magic isn't as nerdy as LARPing
Redditor Wingedinsect was watching MTV and noticed a familiar face: Magic's own Brian Kibler!
If you read my article last week, you may have done a double take. Once again, GR Aggro is the winner and, once again, RW Humans makes a showing in the top 8. I am a big fan of the inclusion of Wolfir Silverheart in GR Aggro. He makes a great Green Sun's Zenith target and makes their titans look vaguely ridiculous.
I think this card is the real deal and not just a good choice for block. If you can snag these for under 10 bucks, now may be your last chance.
Ian Ellis took top honors with "Junk" (err, Dark Horizons), an old favorite of mine.
Even more exciting, both Dredge and Dream Halls made top 8. It's very exciting to see some non-Delver decks doing well. Legacy continues to be a dynamic format where any given list on any given Sunday can get there.
Miracles really can happen! With 16 Miracle cards in his innovative block deck, Alexander Hayne defeated stiff competition, including Johnny Magic himself to take home first prize.
There is a lot to be gleaned from how the pros innovated a format with such a small card pool. Usually relegated to MTGO, Block Constructed can be a window into cards that may make a huge splash in standard after the rotation.
So much green! I see a lot of Wolfir Silverheart, which lead to its dramatic price spike from 3 bucks to 12. Again, Insiders got the top off on Thursday, which makes those email blasts worth it.
Hayne's winning deck looks like a ton of fun to play. Is it even better ported to standard, a format where we have access to Noxious Revival? Maybe Entreat the Angels is closer to Decree Of Justice than we thought. Hayne rolled with the punches, adapting to a format likely to be filthy with Cavern of Souls by eschewing counters for board wipe and control in the form of Feeling Of Dread (a card which I think is Standard playable) to deal with uncounterable dudes.
Great job, Alex!
This is the end, my only friend
That's all I have for you this week! But first I have a sneak preview of next week's article.
I am currently on a week-long road trip with binder grinder extraordinaire Ryan Bushard. This trip is an epic shop crawl, culminating in a big sell off at GP Minneapolis. I will be tweeting my progress from the road and summarizing what I learned about shop crawling in next week's article. You won't want to miss it!
Follow me on Twitter @JasonEAlt for up-to-the-minute updates and check this space next week!
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
It was round five of the SCG Standard Open in Madison. I had already racked up two losses and I was not excited about playing the rest of the day out. My hangover and deck choice were getting the best of me.
I sat across from my opponent and complained about how much I disliked my deck. He claimed that he was “loving” his deck and that it was working well for him all day, a strange thing for a man with a 2-2 record to say. About two turns into the game it was revealed that we were playing the GR Aggro mirror-match.
Maybe I’m just more particular than other people.
We got to playing and I 2-0’d him very easily. His list featured Hellrider, which, in my experience, isn’t very good in this deck. He drew two of them in game two while on the play and they just didn’t matter very much. Four mana is a lot and the card doesn’t compare to Huntmaster of the Fells.
It also has some negative implications for the manabase, but even when you draw two G/R duals (which he did), there are just better things to be doing than casting 3/3s at the top of your curve.
Last week I talked about the importance of having a good decklist. This week I’d like to highlight some of the weaknesses that exist in the popular versions of some of the most-played decks in Standard.
GR Aggro
As I stated above, I really did not enjoy playing GR Aggro this weekend. A variant of the deck did end up winning the tournament though, so it’s not like it’s completely unviable. However, there are a few slots in most lists that I feel are just plain wrong.
Hellrider definitely doesn’t belong in this deck. Double-red if very hard on the manabase and for a four drop he’s pretty underwhelming. It’s true that three toughness is a good stat in the current metagame, but I’d much rather have a fourth Wolfir Avenger for its efficiency and ability to bait counterspells.
It’s important to remember that if you cut Hellriders, then you want to turn at least one Mountain into a Forest. Double-green is very important, and without Hellrider double-red becomes generally extraneous.
I like Lange’s inclusion of Wolfir Silverheart. I was playing one copy myself and he proved to be insane in aggressive mirrors. That said, I’m not sure why he was playing Garruk Relentless. It’s possible that it’s good in control matchups but I’d be more worried about beating the mirror and Delver.
I also really hate playing eight mana-dorks. I frequently found myself drawing far too many mana sources with this deck, especially in post-board games when your opponent will always have an answer to your equipment. Casting a Wolfir Avenger on turn two isn’t really better than Strangleroot Geist.
I like having more two-drops in the deck and advocate the inclusion of Garruk's Companion. He attacks well and trades with most things on defense, not to mention how well he pairs with Wolfir Silverheart.
Another potential two-drop is Porcelain Legionnaire. Some Delver lists have been playing him for his resilience to Whipflare. I think I’m more worried about Delver Gut Shoting him, so I’d go with the Companion.
Pillar of Flame is just better than Galvanic Blast. If you’re metalcrafting Blast that means you have three Swords and you should just be winning anyway. That or you’re losing so bad that your other non-creature spells just don’t matter. Being sorcery speed makes Pillar interact worse with Huntmaster, but killing opposing Strangleroot Geists and Geralf's Messengers is more than worth this tradeoff.
The last slot that I don’t like in most lists are the sideboard Act of Aggressions. It’s a rare occasion that you instant speed them and Zealous Conscripts comes with an attacking body.
Bad ones:
Good ones:
Delver
Delver was very successful in Madison. With six decks in the top 16 it’s clear that Avacyn Restored hasn’t brought the monster down. At least not yet.
I’m a pretty big fan of the second place list. I think it’s very close to what I would play were I to Delve again.
The thing that I like most about it is that it’s not playing Invisible Stalker or Dungeon Geists.
Stalker is absolutely abysmal if you don’t have equipment, and, like I said, in the GR section everybody has answers to your Swords. If you really like attacking for one then just don’t reveal anything with your Delver of Secrets.
Dungeon Geists is fine against decks with undying creatures, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that it’s a four-mana sorcery-speed monster. Tapping out and giving your opponent a window to cast the spells on the same spot on their curve can be devastating.
The inclusion of Phantasmal Image seems very good if you're expecting to play the mirror and GR Aggro a lot. Copying Geist of Saint Trafts and Strangleroot Geists are both fine plays.
I’m not really a fan of Tenjum’s Thought Scours though. If you’re not playing Runechanter's Pike, all that it does is cycle. I’ve heard arguments that it’s super special awesome that you can use it to use your Snapcaster Mage as an instant speed Silvergil Adept. I’m assuming this is in games when you don’t draw Vapor Snag or Mana Leak. That really isn’t very much utility and I’ve never had the complaint that my Snapcasters weren’t giving me enough value.
One card that is notably missing from most Delver decks is Midnight Haunting. I know what you’re thinking, but the existence of Lingering Souls hardly invalidates the legitimacy of playing Haunting. You’re just spoiled and need to get over it.
Instant speed threats are great in decks with counterspells and Haunting has been very good in my experience with the deck. There are some games when it’s too risky to tap out for Geist of Saint Traft and Haunting is an all-star in these situations.
Bad ones:
Good ones:
RW Humans
I don’t know if it’s fair to call this deck tier one just yet, but I can attest to it being somewhat nerve-racking to play against. The deck looks extremely weak to Whipflare, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it’s going to be seeing a good amount of play. Most of your matches are going to be aggressive mirrors in the immediate future anyway.
The first thing I would do if I wanted to play this deck would be to cut Doomed Traveler. What is this, block constructed? 1/1s are stinky and rebuying for another 1/1 isn’t exciting. I understand that it’s a Stormblood Berserker enabler, but you have plenty of other two-drops. It’s not going to destroy your game plan to bloodthirst Berserker on turn three.
Speaking of two drops, I’m not huge on Honor of the Pure in this deck. It looks to me like you’re already playing creatures that beat down very effectively. I certainly wouldn’t want to be playing the mirror-match where my opponent has it and I don’t, but it doesn’t look especially relevant in other matchups. I would recommend switching it to the board for some of those Oblivion Rings.
The biggest weakness of the deck is the lack of ability to interact with your opponent at all. Just turning creatures sideways is no way to go through life. That isn’t even the recipe for a good limited deck. I don’t think that there are enough red sources to reliably play burn spells, but O-Ring and Dismember seem like good inclusions to me.
Bad ones:
Good ones:
Wolf Run
I’m going to go ahead and say that I would not be the guy to ask for advice about building this deck. I do have some grievances though.
Looking at recent Top 8s I’ve been seeing a lot of Wolf Run players splashing for white. I really don’t like this, as it makes your mana much worse. Were I to play ramp, I believe I’d play a straight GR list with Cavern of Souls. Delver is still everywhere and resolving Titans and Huntmasters is still good against them.
I don’t know what incentive you have to splash for Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. You already go way over the top of GR Aggro. It’s probably really good against RW Humans, save for the fact that you can’t cast it before you lose. Batterskull and Wurmcoil Engine seem like much safer bets to me, as they come down earlier and don’t require you to play a terrible manabase.
The other note that I have about Ramp is that it should most definitely be playing Bonfire of the Damned. I mean, have you read this card? Not miracle-ing it isn’t the end of the world and miracle-ing it is often the end of the game. Just try it out.
Bad ones:
Good ones:
~
I reckon that’s about all I have for this week. If you’d like me to elaborate on any of these card choices, I’d be more than happy to respond to any questions in the comments section.
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Pro Tour Avacyn Restored brought us a much wider variety of decks than I expected. Hopefully, a bunch of you jumped on the early Wolfir Silverheart tip, and are currently facing the #FirstWorldProblem of finding the best way to unload them. I agree with Doug’s update, that this price on Silverheart can’t hold. While I do expect it to see some standard play, it won’t be in huge numbers and its a non-mythic. $3 is really about the highest it could see long term.
The most interesting thing I have taken away from this event is the Pro Tour winning Miracle deck. From the whisperings, I expect variations of this deck to make it into Standard, but it’s unknown what exactly that might look like. From my own brews I expect it to be a mix of Miracles and Planeswalkers with a Tap-Out Control style of play.
Standard Season has begun and the first big rush of PTQs is beginning. What cards are worth speculating on right now? If the Star City Games circuit tells us anything from last week, there’s still tons of Delver and R/G aggro in the mix, as well as the new R/W Humans deck that breached the top 8 two weeks in a row. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a Standard Control deck at the top 8, and that never lasts long. What would a control deck have to look like to survive this metagame, and what are the tools that stand to gain the most value from this shift?
There are three paths I could see this going.
Disruption
To deal with the Ramp and Aggro decks we need tools that are effective against both. I’ve been recommending hoarding Despise for almost a year, and it’s approaching payoff time. Despise pre-empts a Primeval Titan, while a Mana Leak no longer can thanks to Cavern of Souls. It also prevents Strangleroot Geist from utilizing Undying, and and stops a Geist of Saint Traft from making Angels.
Other disruption options include Appetite for Brains, which is so narrow I only expect it to see minimal Sideboard play. Other options include Nevermore, Phyrexian Revoker and of course Liliana of the Veil. While I don’t think Liliana of the Veil is amazing at combating the strategies the control decks will face, it will likely be a piece of the puzzle, and the piece that stands to gain the most.
She’s fallen as low as $20 on some retail sites, and I expect that to climb back up to the $25 range through the season. Despise has the highest percent gain potential, as it could easily see $2+ and is currently only $0.50. Nevermore and Revoker are less exciting to me, but you’ll want to have some of your speculation money in this category in one form or another.
Personally, I’m switching modes from slowly picking up Despises in trades, to actively buying them if I can find a playset under $1.50. Liliana has moved off my “Watch” list, and I’m actively buying it at $20. By the time middle of the season hits, I hope to have 100 copies of Despise to sell at PTQ’s. The Liliana’s will be piece by piece, and if the price inflates I’ll move them out slowly.
Over-the-top
The other option for control is to simply go over-the-top of their opponents. This has long been a buzz word in Magic Theory, but we’re really talking about playing a spell that is so much more powerful than what your opponent is doing, that it makes up any advantage they’ve made during the early game. Cards like Karn Liberated, Temporal Mastery, White Sun's Zenith, Entreat the Angels, Blue Sun's Zenith,Griselbrand, [card Gisela, Blade of Goldnight]Gisela[/card] and Gideon Jura are all examples of this. The problem is, when your opponents are casting Titans, there’s not much more over the top you can get.
The Control brew I’ve been working on plays many of the cards listed in this category, and the one’s I think are in a good place to gain are Blue and White Sun’s Zenith. Both can be bought under $.50 retail, and if they begin to see any regular play they should more than double their value. Ideally, you’d want to see at least $1 profit to cover shipping to make this worth while. I’m not quite ready to pull the trigger too deep on these by buying online, but targeting them in trades is a fine plan.
The card I’m up to 25 of in my personal stash (and climbing) is Witchbane Orb. While the Orb doesn’t go over-the-top itself, it protects you from all sorts of detrimental effects that prevent you from getting to your 7 mana spells (like Despise, Shrine of Burning Rage or Zombie triggers). This card will be a 2-3 copy board plan in any tap-out style control deck. At bulk price, it is a minimal risk, and if the Block Constructed is any sign about the future of Standard, it will be seeing tons of Sideboard play in the fall. If it doesn’t spike up during PTQ season, I’ll wait it out until States this fall.
Faster, More Accurate
When I was learning to play guitar, my instructor would have me do fingering drills. “Now do it faster, and more accurate.” It didn’t matter how fast or accurate I was, there was always the possibility to be faster and more accurate. Same goes for Standard. An all-in RDW deck may be able to steal some weekends at the PTQ circuit as long as decks are ill-equipped to deal with it. With access to Manabarbs RDW has the ability to shut down Ramp decks, and can simply out race Delver with Stromkirk Noble and Stormblood Berserker. It can also fight control decks with Shrine of Burning Rage. My recommended pickups in this category are the Noble and the Berserker.
Noble is under $3, and could see peaks of $5-6, while the berserker is under $1 and realistically could hit $2. The berserker is the riskier play, because it rotates in the fall (unless it’s reprinted this summer, which isn’t likely due to it having bloodthirst) and Stromkirk is a bit safer. Typically after fall rotation hyper aggressive Red decks shine while people figure out the new format. At the least the Noble will be played heavily at that time, if it doesn’t spike for Standard Season this summer.
What to do about it?
Picking your favorite of the above categories is not the best route to go. I’m strongly in the stance that the “Over-the-top” control is the way to go this summer, but I’m not going to put all my eggs in that basket. You want a strong selection or two from each category where any single winner will cover the lost shipping costs of the ones that don’t gain. Further, we want to be targeting cards in each category that don’t have a huge risk of losses. My speculation profile is going to include: Despise(<$.50), Liliana($20), Witchbane Orb(bulk), Karn Liberated (only $11 really??), Gideon Jura ($6?!?), Shrine of Burning Rage($1+) and Stromkirk Noble(<$3). As the season proceeds I’ll talk about when is the good time to get out of these cards. If there are other cards to target in these categories I haven’t mentioned, discuss them in the comments below!
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Most of you all probably already know that Star City Games has increased the sell price on their Misty Rainforests to $19.99 + shipping. They’ve also increased their buy price to $10.00
Meanwhile, a quick hop over to cardshark.com reveals the cheapest Misty Rainforests there are currently selling for between $11.00 and $12.00 + shipping, which nets somewhere between $14.00 and $15.00.
Extending the search for Misty Rainforests to eBay.com, we can find the cheapest ones, albeit played, are selling for between $12.00 and $13.00 shipped.
Which price would you like to pay for these highly liquid and vastly played cards? The eBay prices certainly seem most attractive, but I believe there is a better answer. Would you not prefer to pay prices closest to Star City Games’ buy price?
The Easiest Way to Shop
It’s unlikely we will be able to buy cards exactly at the buy prices of the large retailers. Although we can offer prices without fees, we also lack the capital to offer buy prices on such vast quantities of cards, thereby limiting our purchasing power.
We can, however, buy many cards slightly above retail buy prices, by simply creating a buylist of our own. The concept is simple yet elegant. The larger the buylist, the more likely we will acquire cards we desire most at attractive prices.
For example, I tested the practicality on MOTL by adding a short buylist towards the end of my sale list. Besides listing all the Angels from Avacyn Restored which I needed for my collection, I also added the following:
4x Misty Rainforest - $10.50
4x Scalding Tarn - $10.50
4x Arid Mesa - $7.00
4x Marsh Flats - $7.00
4x Verdant Catacombs - $6.50
2x Geist of Saint Traft - $14
2x Huntmaster of the Fells - $14
After a couple days on MOTL, I managed to purchase about half of the cards listed in sufficient quantities to justify shipping costs. At the end of the day, I had a dozen fetch lands and a few extra Standard staples on their way to my doorstep with minimal effort on my part. No need to scour eBay waiting for an underpriced auction and no need to sift through endless MOTL listings attempting to locate the best deals.
Size Does Matter
The list I created above was relatively small, but I chose cards that most people had and listed buy prices above retail buy prices. As a result, people with excess of these cards knew they could have an immediate sale at better-than-retail buylist pricing. The benefit to me is that I can acquire highly desired cards for cheap without much effort. A true win-win scenario!
In order to drive traffic to your buylist, however, you will need some starting capital. Additionally, the longer the list the more people will look to sell you cards. One reason sites like Star City Games and Channel Fireball can offer slightly lower buylist prices is because they will buy thousands of cards at non-bulk pricing. If you create a buylist with ten cards on it, you will have to offer a premium price if just to justify shipping costs.
Maintain a list for long enough and you may even have trade grinders seeking out your cards at FNMs to trade for so they can convert some of their collection for cash. These grinders love to convert as many cards as possible into cash, so by offering prices on more cards you have a higher likelihood of making worthwhile purchases.
If your buylist is not specific, with listed cards and prices (as in the Craigslist posting above), you are less likely to receive hits. Even if your buylist contains a few EDH cards priced at three dollars each, it’s not likely you’ll be buying much.
Unless one person has most of the cards on your list, no one is going to view it worth their time to ship you ten dollars in cards. If, on the other hand, you list many midrange cards in addition to the cheaper ones, you will then find that sellers will add in a cheap card or two in addition to the mid-range cards.
In essence, you should offer competitive buy prices on solid midrange cards (i.e. cards in the $10-$20 range) and then some more favorable buy prices on some cheaper cards. Your sellers will go ahead and settle for lower value on the cheaper cards since they can ship everything to you all at once, thereby maximizing the deal for them.
A Few Key Watchouts
The next time Troll and Toad lists a new buylist on MOTL, take a look at all the rules they’ve created. The fine print is so long, the restrictions look like a legal document – but this is absolutely necessary when you are making so many large purchases.
Why must Troll and Toad enforce so many rules? It’s likely because they have been burnt multiple times in the past by poor MOTL transactions. Either card conditions were misrepresented, shipping time was too slow, excess cards were offered, etc. For every way your buylist can be exploited, a MOTL member will attempt to take advantage.
Therefore, my caution to you is to keep a close eye on your buylist’s action. If you make a list that is too long and too attractively priced, you will have more people selling you cards than you will have the cash for. This will bog you down and may lead to some suboptimal transactions. Troll and Toad experienced this firsthand and have since added multiple rules and disclaimers to their buylists on MOTL in order to cover themselves. You may want to consider something similar.
Another key watchout with buylists is the low-baller. Give an inch and these sharks will take a mile. Therefore, it is my recommendation to put at the top of your buylist in bold letters that your prices are non-negotiable. After all, there is a reason you are implementing this buylist with these prices – to profit. Having members of the MTG community constantly try to negotiate your sell prices higher may increase transactions, but it will also significantly eat into your profits. If you choose competitive buy prices to start with, you will minimize but not eliminate low-ball offers.
Finally, my last word of caution relates to pricing. If you choose buy prices below retail you will garner zero interest in your list. The whole purpose of this exercise is to generate a win-win scenario for you and the seller. They get a little more in buy-listing their cards and you obtain cards at below-eBay prices with minimal effort. Attempt to exploit this system to an extreme and you’ll likely turn sellers off, hurting your reputation.
It’s Worth a Try
Members of the MTG community are starting to realize that creating their own buylist is not only profitable, but also easy. An hour’s worth of research would be sufficient time to create a buylist. And until the market is flooded with them, which seems unlikely, there will always be opportunity to acquire competitively priced cards at bargain prices.
If people are selling Misty Rainforests on eBay for $13, this means they are willing to accept $10 - $11 for the cards in net cash. Fees and shipping costs are a reality that these sellers choose to accept.
Imagine if they had access to buylists where they could sell their Misty Rainforests for $11 each. They won’t acquire the feedback, but they will certainly make the same amount of money they would have made on sites that do charge fees. The scenario is beneficial to both parties.
The key is to operate within this gap between retail buy prices and eBay sell prices. In between is a ten to twenty percent spread within which you can profit. Better yet, you can take these Misty Rainforests and trade them at your next FNM with a retail price of $19.99. Convert them into Legacy staples for even greater profit.
The opportunity is certainly there. From first hand experience, I am delighted with the process and I intend to try it again in the future.
My self-pity party ended abruptly when I took a second to think about where I was. It was easy to sit there and brood, but I was at the tail end of the most anticipated vacation of my life. To allow myself to continue to tilt would be an egregious disservice to myself.
